Dear Editor,
The letter by my old friend and comrade Navin Chandarpal, ‘A voter has the right to secrecy,’ (SN, Jan 21), and the response of President Bharat Jagdeo as reported by Demerarawaves.com, ‘Jagdeo calls Navin Chandrapal vindictive, bitter because he was fired for non-performance,’ are important for several reasons. They signal that the PPP has borne the ultimate fruit of its undemocratic practices.
President Jagdeo at a press conference on January 17 stated that he was in favour of voting by a show of hands because the danger of secret voting was that prospective candidates could promise the electors “ things to get them to vote for them.” Mr Chandarpal showed that Mr Jagdeo’s utterance was illogical and did not support the argument made by the President for a show of hands but rather supported the case for secret voting. At no time did Mr Chandarpal critcise or attack the person or character of President Jagdeo. He solely dealt with the issue raised by the President. One would therefore expect President Jagdeo to rebut Mr Chandarpal on the arguments he made.
However President Jagdeo resorted to attacking Navin’s person and character in his now infamous ‘cuss down’ and ‘buse out’ style. He said that he fired Navin because of “lack of performance. In the several years that he was at the Office of the President , he never completed a single assignment for me.” Now Navin has been at OP for well over a decade. Assuming, but not conceding, that the President was correct, it means then that Navin must have been rather inefficient or incompetent or downright insubordinate. It stands to reason that President Jagdeo is an extremely poor manager for condoning non-performance for over a decade. Maybe he kept Navin at OP because of party affiliation or because he was a friend. In this case he would be guilty of favouritism, nepotism and cronyism.
In his diatribe on Navin the President said, “ he did absolutely no work except going to the rumshop.” How come it is OK for one minister to imbibe, pistol whip a teenager over a woman and knock down a motor cyclist but it is not OK for Navin to take a drink? Could it be that this minister is a yes man whilst Navin frequently criticized Mr Jagdeo’s policies at party and cabinet level? In fact Navin has said that he was dismissed because he was a critic of Mr Jagdeo at party and cabinet level.
That Mr Jagdeo is intolerant of criticism should come as no surprise to anyone because he was nurtured and conditioned in an undemocratic party. President Jagdeo is the ultimate fruit of Janet Jagan’s PPP. He was foisted onto the PPP by her. So long as the PPP retains its obsolete party structure and democratic centralism it would continue to produce Jagdeos. The party is so organized that those few at the top will always perpetuate themselves in the leadership of the party. I am sure that Navin, Moses Nagamootoo and Komal Chand now see the folly of democratic centralism. In discussing the PPP I like to use the analogy of milk.
When milk is boiled the cream rises to the top. When it is spoilt the cream sinks to the bottom. The PPP is like sour milk. The cream always sinks to the bottom. How else can you explain the ousting of Navin, Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, Rajendra Bissessar, Lionel Peters, Jinnah Rahaman, and yours truly? God knows we were not in the anti dictatorship struggle to accumulate mansions and fortunes. The PPP is now firmly in the hands of President Jagdeo.
Someone has to rescue the PPP from him and the nouveau riche elite and it seems that Navin has assumed the role of liberator. So long as the PPP is in government it will be very difficult to wrest control from Mr Jagdeo and his supporters due to the ability to buy loyalties.
However if the PPP were to lose the government and be relegated to the opposition benches it would be much easier as those who have benefited would switch allegiance to the new rulers. The party will then be returned to the ousted party stalwarts of the ’70s and ’80s. I have much respect for Navin. In the ’70s when he was the First Secretary of the PYO I had envisaged him as the future leader of the PPP. I guess his time has come.
I trust that he will rebuild the PPP into a modern open democratic non-communist party where the presidential candidate, as well as office bearers, will be elected directly by the membership, and where members’ right to free speech will not be curtailed. Only then will the cream rise to the top. It is time to forget Marxism-Leninism. The PNC has already begun to rebuild and democratize itself. It is only a matter of time before Corbin is replaced as leader of that party. It is time the PPP follow suit.
Yours faithfully,
Malcolm Harripaul
