Former PPP Executive member Ralph Ramkarran is right in highlighting corruption in government circles, Joey Jagan, the son of PPP founders and late presidents Dr. Cheddi and Janet Jagan, has said, while urging criminal prosecution for anyone found guilty of such behaviour, regardless of party ties.
In a letter to Stabroek News, Jagan hailed Ramkarran’s resignation from the ruling party and drew a parallel to Ramkarran’s father, Boysie Ramkarran’s importance to the late president. “Boysie Ramkarran would have been proud of his son in this pressing period in our political history, because without Boysie, (Cheddi) Jagan would have been like a man without a right arm, just the way the PPP will be without Ralph Ramkarran,” he said in the letter published in today’s edition.
Ramkarran, whose family has long been associated with the party and who is seen as one of its most credible figures, tendered his resignation after the fallout from a recent column he authored in the Mirror newspaper, in which he said that corruption was pervasive and the government needed to do something about it. At a fiery meeting of the PPP Executive Committee last Friday, he was lambasted by two senior officials who also work in the Office of the President, Stabroek News was told. Freedom House on Monday said that it intends to engage Ramkarran on his resignation, in order to reconcile. The party said an “offending remark” made by a member was withdrawn and an apology offered.
PPP General Secretary, President Donald Ramotar has not commented on Ramkarran’s resignation but in a posting on his official Facebook page, he saluted the former Speaker’s contributions to the party and country. “I wish to state that (Ralph) is a long standing and highly respected member of the PPP. He has made very valuable contributions to the Party as well as to the country. It is unfortunate that he resigned after a debate at EXCO and that during the course of the discussions he felt as if he was insulted. As in the past we intend to work on a reconciliatory discussion with (Ralph),” the post said.
‘So be it’
Jagan, in his letter, apologised to Ramkarran “for my errors of judgment in relation to his political positions over the years.” He said that Ramkarran came from the very bowels of the working classes of Guyana and in a recent executive meeting of the PPP, a member of the executive insulted and abused him about being born “with a gold spoon in his mouth” and not being of the working classes. “That was the last straw for him. Mr. Ramkarran was correct to talk of corruption and I have sent President Ramotar more than one letter over the last six months concerning this issue. As recently as three weeks ago, at a big meeting of the candidates on the PPP/Civic list of electors held at Red House, I as a candidate, called openly for those guilty of governmental corruption to be arrested,” Jagan said.
“Boysie Ramkarran was never corrupt and would never tolerate corruption, and that is why he was a trusted and devoted comrade of Jagan. I can tell anyone that if President Cheddi was alive today, he would have severely punished anyone who insulted and forced Boysie’s first son to resign from the PPP,” Jagan said. He added that as a candidate for the PPP/Civic slate in the 2011 elections, he would like to state that the person(s) who added insult to injury against Ralph Ramkarran at the Executive PPP meeting last week “should be expelled from Jagan’s party immediately.”
“Mr. Ramkarran was correct in pinpointing corruption in government circles and furthermore, criminal prosecution for those who are guilty is the best medicine to stop the cancer of corrupt behaviour; resignation is not enough. And if ‘friends’ and ‘comrades’ fall, then so be it,” Jagan said. He said that former president Bharrat Jagdeo “obviously did not believe in the concept of ‘the buck stops here’…and “let us all pray that President Ramotar is not like Mr. Jagdeo and proves that the buck stops at the desk of the President.”
He recalled the Ramkarrans role in the party. “Ralph Ramkarran is definitely royalty in the history of the working classes of this country because his father, Boysie Ramkarran, was one of the princes of the working class movement up to the end of his life. I always loved and admired Boysie and I can tell anyone, anywhere and at any time, that Boysie Ramkarran was the most loyal but outspoken comrade Jagan ever had, full stop,” he wrote. He noted that Boysie Ramkarran was there from the beginning when the PPP was in its infancy, serving as Treasurer of the PPP Jagan led in 1953, and he served in every government Jagan led up to 1964. He recalled that when Dr. Jagan was imprisoned by the British in 1954, Boysie Ramkarran was also sent to Mazaruni prison after being restricted to his Bel Air home for almost a year. He also noted the other posts held by Boysie Ramkarran.
“I will always remember Boysie Ramkarran as a man whom my father always treated as his equal and of whom I never heard my father say anything negative. Jagan always had a special feeling for Boysie and I know the whole story of his departure from the PPP leadership, which President Cheddi always regretted,” he wrote.
‘Crocodile tears’
Meantime, Jagan was critical of former PPP executive and now AFC MP Moses Nagamootoo. Following Ramkarran’s resignation, Nagamootoo, in a posting on his Facebook page, said that taking his concerns about corruption public was the “cardinal sin” by Ramkarran and it was only a matter of time before he “fell to the axe of the tiny and frightened clique of Stalinists who have hijacked the PPP.”
“The resignation of Ralph Ramkarran from the PPP comes as no surprise, yet it is of great significance for the struggle for decency in public life and clean and accountable governance in Guyana,” he said. He noted that Ramkarran has been with the PPP for literally his entire lifetime, being the eldest son of one of the founders, “Boysie” Ramkarran. “Ralph best represented a moderate outlook for the PPP, and was seen as a compromise candidate to succeed the late Jagans in both the party and state leadership, which was why I backed him in 2010 when I withdrew from the selection process for a presidential candidate,” Nagamootoo said. “He was defeated by undemocratic methods and maligned, for taking his concerns about corruption public. This is a cardinal and key “sin”, and it was a matter of time that, like the democrats before, he fell to the axe of the tiny and frightened clique of Stalinists who have hijacked the PPP,” he charged. He said that the PPP would “try to get him back, and would make him debased offers as his resignation has taken the PPP to a point of detour from which there would be no return.”
However, Jagan charged that “the ‘crocodile tears’ which were expressed in the press by Nagamootoo cannot cover up the fact that at the most critical moment in Mr. Ramkarran’s political career at Freedom House in 1997, before the general elections, it was the terrible behaviour of Mr Nagamootoo against Mr. Ramkarran that lost him his chance to lead the PPP/Civic to victory.”
“However, the undermining of Ramkarran’s chances to lead the PPP/Civic also involved other persons who had also undermined Mr. Ramkarran’s father, Boysie, years before when he was basically forced out of the PPP leadership, after serving my father loyally from the very beginning of his political career,” he wrote. “Again, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Ralph Ramkarran and his family for the comments I have made in the past, and I would like to congratulate him for the fire in his belly that he has found and which was put there by his father, an illustrious servant of the people of Guyana,” he said.
