Dear Editor,
This is a love letter to Bharrat Jagdeo. Not because he is beyond criticism. Not because he is universally admired. Not because of his charisma. But because, in the history of post-independence Guyana, few political figures have shaped the country’s economic direction, strategic posture, and governing centre of gravity as deeply as he has.
Jagdeo deserves his flowers for more than presiding over economic transformation. He deserves them for vision, political endurance, and his ability to understand power, leverage, and timing in ways few of his rivals ever have. Long before oil transformed Guyana’s revenue base, Jagdeo was already thinking in generational terms about the country’s place in the world, its development trajectory, and the strategic value of geography, environment, and international alliances. From climate leadership and his “Champion of the Earth” recognition, to the Low Carbon Development Strategy, to cultivating international and regional partnerships, to steering the PPP into a position of long-term dominance, his imprint is impossible to ignore.
He also does not get enough credit for what it meant to govern Guyana through a period marked by deep instability, fear, polarisation, and violence. Many Guyanese remember those years not as abstract political history, but as lived uncertainty. I recall once travelling by taxi to the University of Guyana and, in the course of a casual conversation about politics and life in the country, the driver said to me: “You are exactly the type of young man that we need to recruit, train and mobilize on the front line against this government.” He was referring to the PPP government. I had never met this man before in my life. I had simply entered a taxi on Sheriff Street. That moment stayed with me because it captured something deeper about the political climate of the time, that is, how easily young men, especially young men living in poverty, could be imagined as instruments in a larger political struggle.
Jagdeo, whatever one thinks of him, understood the stakes of that environment. He understood that Guyana was never governed only through policy. It was governed through competing interests, organised pressure, ethnic mistrust, foreign influence, domestic business networks, and constant struggles over power, resources, and legitimacy. He understood the state not romantically, but strategically. That is one reason he rose not only to lead Guyana economically, but to lead the PPP itself.
His critics will say that this was manipulation. His defenders will say it was political intelligence. The truth may well be that it was both. But what cannot be denied is that Jagdeo has consistently shown a capacity to read power and to respond to it. Whether dealing with hostile interviews, external pressure, domestic opposition, or narratives designed to diminish him, he has shown that he understands how leverage is created, how it is used, and how it is survived.
This is also why the weakness of the opposition cannot be explained only by elections. The deeper problem is that too much of the opposition has long been sustained by posture, grievance, and internal competition for livelihood, relevance, and access. An opposition that cannot manage its own house is not ready to manage a high-stakes, resource-rich, strategically located state like Guyana. Many know this privately, though few will say it openly.
That said, I would encourage Jagdeo to do even more to shape the moral side of his legacy. He has the network, influence, and leverage to deepen philanthropic and institution-building work that directly supports working-class, poor, and marginalized communities. Make the Bharrat Jagdeo Foundation more visible, more inclusive, and more felt. Mobilize support and pportutniireis for social enterprises. Let it not only symbolize success, but build it for others.
If history is generous, it may one day say that this was a man who, from the aspirations of youth, helped position Guyana for the next century. That would be no small legacy.