Dear Editor,
Mr Ramkarran claims I lack comprehension (The Central Committee is the only body authorized in the PPP to decide on the presidential candidate, SN, December 24, 2010). Indeed Mr Ramkarran’s letter did speak specifically to the Central Committee (CC) and not to the Executive Committee (‘The PPP has always conducted contested elections by secret ballot’ SN, December 24, 2010). However, although the CC may be the only constitutionally constituted body within the PPP authorized to decide on the presidential candidate, the Executive Committee (EC), a minority of 15 members chosen from the 36-member CC, has always made this decision in the history of the PPP. This EC is the real power and force within the PPP and within the CC itself.
It is the first and final decider and the one and only group within the PPP and the CC that determines who becomes the presidential candidate of the PPP, and given the ethnic voting pattern in Guyana and the Indian-Guyanese ethnic majority, who likely becomes the President of Guyana. The rest of the CC which happens to be the majority (21 compared to 15 members) must swallow and rubber stamp without question the decision of the EC on who becomes the PPP’s presidential candidate. After all the battling in consideration of various names, the EC arrives at a single name. That name is then handed to the other 21 members of the CC who have no choice but must swallow and rubber stamp that name.
This is the kind of democracy the PPP has practised when a minority of 15 makes a decision that the majority of 21 must accept. After all, one cannot vote when only a single name is given to you. Add the facts that the EC members are the most powerful in the party, that a member of the EC is always selected as the PPP’s presidential candidate and virtually all 36 CC members depend on the party and its government for their livelihoods and will vote in self-interest, one gets a wonderful example of the unmitigated mockery of democracy that unfolds within the PPP. Mr Ramkarran admitted in a letter that a PPP Executive Committee meeting in August 1997 went as follows, “At the meeting there was a broad, wide-ranging discussion on the issue and many comrades were proposed and considered for recommendation to the Central Committee including myself and Mrs Jagan… At the end of the discussions, it was agreed that Mrs Jagan would be recommended to the Central Committee as the candidate.” (italics mine). (‘At the appropriate time there will be nominations and a secret ballot for the presidential candidate of the PPP’ SN, October 1, 2010). Although many names were considered, there is no evidence of any voting or any secret balloting at this August 1997 Executive Committee meeting.
Lionel Peters wrote an illuminating piece (parts of his account are disputed by Ralph Ramkarran) which unequivocally confirms that the EC and not the entire CC makes the ultimate decision of who becomes the presidential candidate and that the rest of the CC simply rubber stamps it (‘Janet Jagan announced she would be the presidential candidate in 1997’ SN, October 2, 2010). How could a cabal of 15 autocratically bypass the majority of of 21 other members and select the president of this nation without any semblance of any shred of democracy? Yet, Mr Ramkarran tells me that I lack comprehension and now wants his sudden self-serving itch of newfound democracy to be scratched by the same cabal of 15 autocrats that he was part of within the PPP who have abused the meaning of democracy and make a mockery of the 183,867 voters who gave them their X in 2006.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
