Declaration of Sophia

Chapter 1 Out of Chaos A New Road

1.1 Ten years ago today, the People’s National Congress entered into office as the major partner in Government of what was then British Guiana, a colony “enjoying” internal self-government, the final constitutional stage before independence.

1.2 This was after seven years in the wilderness as the Opposition, and after the country had gone through a three-year period of upheavals and racial strife bordering on civil war.

1.3 Our junior partner in the coalition government which was then formed was a right-of-centre party – the United Force – with which we worked in uncomfortable harness for nearly four years until 1968.

1.4 There may seem at first blush an inconsistency in our Party – a socialist one – coalescing with a party which was right-wing or capitalist. But the circumstances so dictated.

1.5 Our country had been brought to the brink of ruin by a phrase-mongering, soi-disant leftish party – the People’s Progressive Party – whose leaders stirred up, emphasised and south to exploit racial differences in this a multi-racial society for mere narrow political purposes.

1.6 The economy was run down and had to be retrieved. Many of our people were confused and lacked self-confidence. Mutual suspicion stalked the land and there was an obvious cleavage in our society thanks to colonialism and seven years of mismanagement, corruption and misrule.

1.7 Our first tasks in Government were to bind up the wounds, remove the tensions, restore national self-confidence and proceed to political independence as rapidly as possible.

1.8 The people reacted magnificently and within less than six months the Government was well on its way to achieving the first three objectives. Christmas 1964, as you all remember, was the first relaxed Christmas for many a year.

1.9 The achievement of political independence offered somewhat more difficulty, however. The disgruntled Opposition opposed it under one guise or another and actually sent emissaries to the United Kingdom to lobby “friends” in pursuit of its anti-national stance. Our coalition partners raised many obstacles. Their attitude was born of fear of their supporters losing their former economic dominance, and sprang from a preference for enjoying the crumbs that feel from the imperialists’ table rather than being mere equals – as they saw it – in an independent Guyana.

1.10 Exercising the utmost patience and tolerance, the People’s National Congress, almost dragging the United Force along, succeeded in having settled a date and a Constitution for Independence. As part of the compromise in the circumstances, we had to accept the monarchical system for four years after independence and the typical independence Constitution with all its inhibitions and checks and balances, including the entrenchment of the Privy Council as the final court of appeal.

The Little Man a Real Man

1.11 After Independence the coalition began to fall apart more obviously. This was inevitable, since our partner was essentially a capitalist group and we were socialist. The former not only had a narrow, if any, popular base, but believed in privileges for the few and saw development in terms of local and foreign capitalist expansion.

1.12 The P.N.C, on the other hand, placed emphasis on people – on the proletariat and poor peasants, from which it drew and draws its strength. It encouraged self-reliant at community and national levels. It counted human effort and labour as capital and saw development as primarily the task of the Guyanese people.

1.13 It was bent on transferring economic power to the masses and their representatives and set as its goal the attainment of social justice.

1.14 It identified the co-operative as the instrument for making the Little man a real man. For him, on the contrary, the United Force had scant, if any, regard, contending that that pre-eminently capitalist institution – the privately owned limited liability company – was the best instrument for development and national prosperity and was in fact an advanced form of the co-operative!

1.15 In addition, our coalition partner was inveterately opposed to Guyana’s assuming republican status at any time in the future. It was irrevocably wedded to the monarchical system with the Queen of England as the Queen of Guyana and represented by a Governor-General. These points of view were diametrically opposed to those of the P.N.C who had always, for psychology and other reasons, favoured Guyana’s becoming a republic but had had to make a temporary compromise in 1966 so as to achieve formal independence.

1.16 The coalition eventually disintegrated in 1968 shortly before the General Elections of that year at which the P.N.C gained an overall majority.

1.17 On 23rd February 1970, Guyana became the first Co-operative Republic in the world and the first Republic in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

1.18 Ours is not the first or only government in the developing world to place major emphasis on the use and development of the co-operative as an instrument of development or in the thrust towards socialism.

1.19 We, however, named Guyana a Co-operative Republic to highlight the fact that the Co-operative will be the principal institution for giving the masses the control of our economy, to emphasise the fact that we aim at making the Co-operative sectors the dominant sector and that the Co-operative is and will be the mechanism for making the little man a real man.

1.20 I shall return to this topic later, but may I at this point observe that any party member or leader who does not hold this as an article of faith and act, work and behave accordingly, is untrue to his membership of the Party. In fact, he is unfit to continue holding such membership.

Protest and Struggle

1.21 In its early days, the P.N.C was really an organisation of protest and struggle; protest against the corruption, misrule and narrow partisanship of the political government then in office, a government which nearly ruined our dear country; struggle against imperialism for independence.

1.22 In those days and with those two specific objectives, we sought to mobilise the maximum number of persons who, for varying reasons, shared our objectives. Then, and for some time after, ours was the aim to have a large number of members. We remarked each year on the thousands who flocked to the fold, held membership cards and declared their adherence to the P.N.C. There was no time to pause and examine the bona fides and real commitment of these members, some of whom were, particularly after the P.N.C’s accession to office, mere bandwaggoners.

1.23 Since I am not recording the history of our Party, it is not my duty or intention to refer to every event subsequent to 1966. That task I leave to those who are now embarked upon writing a detailed history of the P.N.C.

1.24 It is enough form my present purpose to note that, since 1970, many of the leadership and membership began to address their minds to basic reform of the Party and its Constitution, to the latter of which, there have been some amendments particularly since 1968.