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GUYANA yesterday cremated in an ordinary village cemetery its most famous adopted citizen, Janet Rosenburg Jagan, who had stoically defied all odds for some 66 years in the country's turbulent politics - from colonialism to republican status - to become its first woman executive president. She was 88.
The warm tributes that flowed across political, religious and cultural boundaries, recognised the sterling contributions of a life deeply interwoven with the nation's social, economic and political developments.
Yet she managed to live comparatively simple, in and out of government, as she became increasingly identified with its arts and culture but always reflecting a dominant and unique political profile.
Fondly hailed across Guyana often by young and old simply as "Janet", the widow of Dr Cheddi Jagan died early Saturday morning within hours of admission at the state hospital in Georgetown.
That was the institution where Guyana's first executive president, Forbes Burnham, had also passed away in 1985 following a throat operation. Janet's husband was to die 12 years later at the US Walter Reed Hospital after heart surgery.
Symbolised as a personality of tremendous courage and endurance, the side of her character which had cherished privacy was allowed to prevail yesterday in a relatively low-key state funeral arranged by the government in consultation with family members.
The funeral arrangement honoured her wish against public viewing of the body in the casket and the restricted official ceremony of tributes at Parliament Building before her final journey to the place where her husband was cremated - approximately 90 miles east of Georgetown, at Babu John in Port Mourant, Corentyne.
Babu John is now regarded as a shrine for remembrance of the Jagans - the husband and wife team whose lives and politics are integrally woven into the history of Guyana for generations to come.
In life, Janet was most unkindly treated by opponents whose political opportunism, depending on the political season, would extend to exploiting her ethnicity (whiteness) and original (American) nationality; and even her gender with some grotesque display of "white dolls" at one point of an emotional campaign during her presidency.
Nevertheless, even her most formidable opponents came to recognise her resilience to remain engaged, as she repressed bitterness in preference for dialogue in the national interest Puzzling matter
Why Janet Jagan was never invited to be a recipient of the Caricom Triennial Award for Women - established in 1984 to recognise women of the region who had distinguished themselves in various leadership roles - remains a puzzling matter and one for which an explanation by the Community's decision-makers may be appropriate.
The region's leading women's organisations could also reflect on this glaring oversight. She, of course, held no grudges against those Caribbean women in public life who have been so honoured by Caricom. Indeed she had joined in recognising their contributions, including as long-serving editor of the PPP-aligned Mirror newspaper.
This was the region's unique woman politician who had sacrificed almost two years of her presidency under a so-called 'Herdmanston Accord' that was to result from Caricom's initiative to broker a post-election impasse between her government and an opposition then led by the now late leader of the People's National Congress Reform, Desmond Hoyte.
To the mass of rural Guyanese of East Indian descent, Janet Jagan was the charming, blue-eyed white "bhowgie" (sister-in-law) as wife of the dentist/politician "big brother", Cheddi Jagan, they had come to enthusiastically embrace following the couple's initial foray in the politics of colonial British Guiana in the late 1940s.
For the rest of the country, and across ethnic boundaries, she was to later emerge as a breath of fresh air in a huge struggle against colonial oppression and grave social injustices, fighting alongside icons such as the veteran trade union leader and national hero, Hubert Nathaniel Crichlow.
Political prisoner
But within 10 years of her marriage in 1943 to Cheddi Jagan at age 22, the young United States-born nursing assistant of Chicago, Illinois, who had given up country and parents to follow her heart of love and share the political passion of Cheddi Jagan, was to be branded a "communist" by the colonial power and jailed for six months.
Like her husband and Guyana's most famous poet, Martin Carter, she was imprisoned and later placed under curfew by the British governor for unsubstantiated allegations of involvement in an international "communist conspiracy" to disrupt the rule of law.
It was a spurious excuse for Britain's suspension of the first-ever popularly elected government, led b the People's Progressive Party (PPP).
That was the party she had helped to launch in 1949 and which was to become a virtual life's work for this remarkable woman politician of the Caribbean region for almost 66 of her 88 years.
During the very painful, challenging, turbulent political years, Janet Jagan stoically suffered the slings and arrows of opponents as she kept scaling hurdles to set a unique record of firsts in the politics of Guyana.
Finally, she was to reach the pinnacle as first woman head of state in December 1997 following the death in office of her husband and after first serving as prime minister.
Yesterday, after two days of mourning and consistent with her wishes, Janet Rosenburg Jagan, the once petite Jewish girl who became the symbol of woman's power in the land of her adoption; a founder-matriarch of the PPP; mother of a daughter and son and grandma of five, was cremated.
She has left behind a governing party, currently in its fourth consecutive term, to face a future without the dominant presence and influence of either herself, or its patriarch that had prevailed for the past half century of the PPP's existence.
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