Dear Editor,
With reference to your published solicitation of the views of a number of PPP persons as to their choice of the PPP’s presidential candidate for 2011, it was interesting to hear what came out of their mouths. For example, if Mr. Ramkarran does not accept the denial of advertisements to the Stabroek News then one must question his democratic credentials since he has not joined Mrs. Jagan’s public condemnation.
I beg to disagree with the interviewees who said that Mr. Ramkarran is a supporter of the free press in Guyana. Mr. Ramkarran’s impatience with the free press mirrors that of Mr. Jagdeo’s. Mr. Ramkarran sued me and the Kaieteur News for libel.
I was unhappy with the settlement and the way the apology was worded. I want to say unambiguously, my fear of Mr. Ramkarran is that he may be more authoritarian than Mr. Jagdeo.
I hope he is not selected by the PPP to be their presidential candidate. Once the names are officially known, we in the media should press these men, who hope to lead this country, on matters of national importance. We should start with Mr. Ramkarran.
He has to, I repeat, has to explain to your readers why he was not and is not in the cabinet. Mr. Nagamootoo argued against Mr. Ramkarran being the lead guy for the PPP in the 1997 elections because, as Nagamotoo put it, he chose not to serve the party in government. To this date, Mr. Ramkarran remains the only top leader in the PPP that has not worked inside the cabinet since 1992. My sources told me that on at least three occasions Mr. Ramkarran was asked. Is this true? If Mr. Ramkarran was requested to serve in the cabinet and he has declined, then except for a water-proof reason, the PPP should not choose him to take them into the 2011 poll.
Mr. Ramotar, who served international communism for five years with Mr. Rohee in Czechoslovakia editing the World Marxist Review, is another autocrat. Can’t the PPP find persons with democratic inclinations to choose from? Mr. Ramotar and Mr. Ramkarran are dyed-in-the wool communists that cannot bring a new economic vision to Guyana. Their politics will determine their economic approach.
I think Mr. Ramkarran has stayed out of the limelight and because of this his politics has not been under the microscope of critics.
My opinion of Mr. Ramkarran was formed by a delivery of his at a symposium at the Hotel Tower at which the others speakers were Professor Harold Lutchman, Vincent Alexander and I. This was during the reign of the PNC. There was a hush in the audience when Mr. Ramkarran told his listeners that the 1980 constitution was not as bad as people think it was.
I know it is a statement that Vincent Alexander would never forget. Neither this commentator.
About the new boy, Mr. Frank Anthony. Another USSR-educated PPP mandarin. I saw Mr. Anthony on a television programme and there was nothing new about him. Again, you detect shades of communist thinking in this gentleman.
But why is someone like Anthony being pushed and not Anil Nandalall who is towering above Anthony in intellectual fibre? Anthony could only have made it to the top because he is your typical PPP responder. Another name for it is the yes man. There doesn’t seem to be a move in the party to push Nandalall. Why? Because in the PPP, he is an independent thinker.
In closing, I hope Ramkarran, Ramotar and Anthony do not make it to the leadership of this country. Guyana cannot survive with closet communists ruling this nation. Let’s all hope that the PPP finally loses in 2011. If I was a religious person I would have prayed everyday until 2011 for that to happen.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
