What may well be the first campaign advertisement to appear in the print media was published recently. The ad depicts the currently party-less Peter Ramsaroop (presumably in the blue corner) and PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar in the red corner. It presents Ramsaroop as an author, corporate wheeler dealer and soldier-turned–social activist and Ramotar as an ageing PPP apparatchik whose campaign is likely to be based on the PNC’s twenty-eight years in power, eighteen years after their tenure came to an end.
Ramsaroop is obviously ahead of the rest of us since it seems that he has already nominated Ramotar as the PPP presidential candidate. Ramotar, of course, is bound to be offended by the ad but so, presumably, will others of his party colleagues including, particularly, Ralph Ramkarran and Moses Nagamootoo, who are bound to have something to say about Ramsaroop’s authority to make such choices.
Mind you, given the kind of guy that he is, Ramsaroop may well run other similar ads in which he will compare himself with the various other presidential hopefuls of which, at last count, there were around ten.