Nagamootoo surprised
PPP Central Committee Member and Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran is disappointed at the low vote tally he received for his seat on the Central Committee of the PPP at its recent congress and cited a lobby against him as the reason for his decline in the party rankings.
In an invited comment about his Number 22 placement following last weekend’s election for Central Committee members, and the contrast between that and the Number 13 position he had secured at the previous congress, Ramkarran told the Stabroek News that the result “was extremely disappointing.”
Ramkarran, who in recent months has been touted in the letter columns of the dailies as a possible PPP/C presidential candidate for the 2011 general election, feels that the results did not reflect the position he has enjoyed at party congresses over the years. Previously his position on average has fallen within the 7 to 13 range. “If there had not been serious lobbying against me,” he said, it would not have dropped so low.
Asked whether the votes indicated who the next party’s presidential candidate would be, Ramkarran replied that based on past experience, the votes Central Committee members received at the congress were no indication of who would or would not be the candidate.
As to whether he was interested in being the party’s nominee for the presidency, Ramkarran said that the party had asked its members not to make any pronouncements about their ambitions in this regard. Until such time as it was necessary, therefore, he would not make any public statements as he would like the party to be as united as possible.
The elections, he said, were more than two years away and many things could change between now and then. In the meantime he would focus on tasks that would not detract from his role as Speaker of the National Assembly and would refrain from pronouncements that would detract from the incumbent, President Bharrat Jagdeo. Under the provisions of Guyana’s constitution Jagdeo is not eligible for another term in office. The PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar has said that a third term for Jagdeo was not an issue and it had not been debated at the party congress.
In response to remarks made by some comrades at the congress that he would not run as a presidential candidate because he had refused the nomination once before, Ramkarran said, “The story that is going around that I was offered the presidency in 1997 and I declined is totally and absolutely untrue.”
He went on to say, “I have never conceived that if I would be called upon to serve my country in the most minor of capacities, I would refuse.”
Meanwhile, at an August 5, 2008 post-Congress press conference, when asked about the pattern of voting in which the President had not received the full support of those casting votes (a total of 913 votes were cast from a list of 1,020 delegates and Jagdeo got 777) and Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran had secured less than he ever had before, Ramotar acknowledged that “there were some unanticipated areas” and that Ramkarran’s relatively low vote count “was a surprise.”
Some party comrades told this newspaper that the reduction in Ramkarran’s total had been due to lobbying among delegates some of whom had been told that voting for him would not make much sense since he was not interested in the presidency. Others tried to dispel this story by asking delegates to vote for him as part of a bloc. Ramotar said the elections had been transparent.
Another surprise at the elections was that Moses Nagamootoo was re-elected to the Central Committee earning the fifth spot. Nagamootoo, like Ramotar, has made no secret of his interest in becoming the party’s presidential candidate.
It was obvious at the congress opening ceremony, where this reporter observed some amount of quiet lobbying, that Nagamootoo was going to enjoy strong support, but he did not envisage the end result.
Asked to comment about his comeback to the ranks of the party’s hierarchy, Nagamootoo said that he knew he had the support of the rank and file but he was nevertheless still a bit surprised given his absence from the party after a fall-out which resulted in him staying away from the congress held at Anna Regina, Essequibo in 2005.
While he has said on several occasions that he was interested in leading the party which he has served for almost 50 years, he indicated that one of his main concerns at present was dealing with a rumour whereby people were openly claiming that he was the writer of the column ‘Peeping Tom’ in the Kaieteur News. He said the rumour had found its way into Parliament and that this was not funny. Someone had even left a recent Peeping Tom article on his desk in Parliament containing comments about the party’s General Secretary and the party’s congress.
“This has gone beyond mischief. I have never been associated with the paper as ‘the’ or ‘a’ Peeping Tom,” he said, adding, “I challenge anyone including the editor to disprove my denial.”
Nagamootoo said he had found that any time something favourable was written about him in the media or he was given favourable publicity, a challenge would be thrown at him from sources he was yet to identify.
He felt that since Congress had spoken and he had indicated his interest publicly some elements not favourably disposed towards him were trying to bait him into a compromising position. “I have a role and a place in the PPP in which I have spent almost 50 years of my life trying to promote and develop. This is my party. I do not want the party to detract from the real issues of development,” he said. (Miranda La Rose)
