Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter written by Mr Frederick Kissoon entitled ‘Mr Ramkarran’s refusal to accept a cabinet position is held against him’ which was carried in Stabroek News of August 12, 2008. In that letter Mr Kissoon concluded, on the basis of information received by him from members of the PPP, that Mr Ramkarran does not have the support of the PPP hierarchy because he has not served as a cabinet minister in any PPP government and is the only major policy-maker in the PPP hierarchy not to have done so.
Were the information on which Mr Kissoon based his analysis to be true, this situation is unfortunate and would be unfair to Mr Ramkarran on at least two grounds. The first is that the facts provided to Mr Kissoon are incorrect. Neither Mr Donald Ramotar nor Mr Komal Chand, both of whom have been in the central and executive committees of the PPP at least since the mid 1980s have served as ministers in any PPP government. Mr Navin Chanderpal, a member of the central and executive committees of the PPP for as long as those two gentlemen, was a minister for just about two years from March 2001 to July 2003 of the sixteen years that the PPP has held government. All of these gentlemen must be classified as major policy-makers in the PPP hierarchy and at least one seems to be interested in the presidential nomination.
The second ground is that such a stance, if in fact held by PPP members, disregards the work Mr Ramkarran has been doing for the PPP and the government since 1992. He was a PPP member of elections commissions in 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2001. No one needs to be reminded, least of all PPP members, how important it is for national elections to be conducted to the satisfaction of the political parties contesting them. Flowing from his membership on election commissions, as far as I can recall, Mr Ramkarran has appeared in all of the cases on behalf of the PPP concerning elections since 1992. I remember that cases have been filed since that year after every election, and sometimes before them.
In 1999, Mr Ramkarran was a PPP member – and was then elected chairman – of the Constitutional Reform Commission, which was given six months to coordinate extensive consultations and make far-reaching reforms to the Constitution of Guyana.
Since 1992 or 1993, Mr Ramkarran has been the Guyana facilitator to the UN Good Officer Process concerning the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy. He has, I believe, also been a member of the National Border Commission. From 2001 to now Mr Ramkarran has been the Speaker of the National Assembly of Guyana overseeing wide-ranging reforms to that body to enable it to return it to the independence it lost during the period between 1964 and 1992.
All of these things constitute valuable service to the PPP and to the country. Each post requires a competent and intelligent leader of the PPP for its functions to be carried out effectively and in accordance with the interests of the leadership of the PPP. No serving minister of government can perform any of those functions. To now say that Mr Ramkarran does not deserve to be the President of Guyana because he has not served as a cabinet minister disregards his important public service to the PPP and the country since 1992 and has probably been formulated, if it is true, to promote other interests which are not consistent with Mr Ramkarran being the PPP’s presidential candidate in 2011.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address
provided)
