SN: How do you respond to the view that your selection was undemocratic, seeing that everybody withdrew and then you were the only candidate left?
DR: Our party had always been the most democratic party in the country. Every position in our party is an elected position. On this question of the presidential candidate, the three colleagues withdrew. I think fundamentally they withdrew because I think they understood very well that… I had probably a lot of support both on the level of the ground and in the leadership of the party. So, I think what they did was very noble because it was in the interest of the party and again it was also in the interest of our country because the history of this country shows that we move forward when the PPP and the PPP/Civic government is in office.
SN: Some people have said that you have never really run a major public corporation or have any ministerial experience. How do you respond to those people…?
DR: I suppose people who are opposed to us—the PPP—and who are oppose to me, will always find excuses, but I am not really worried about those types of comments. …Running the government is not a secret; it is not something that cannot be done. A lot of people…or most people had to get into the government for the first time and do administration for the first time and so forth. I have always been involved in government in the level of policy being a leader of the PPP… I have been fully involved in government at many levels.
SN: So you believe you will be able to run the country effectively?
DR: I want to change the conception a little bit… that one superman is running the country and so forth. I don’t think that any country could be run by one person. It has to be a team, of course, it has to be a cabinet. If and when the PPP win the election, I will be the president but I will not be successful if I work alone. I obviously have to work with a team, I’ll have to pick a good team [and] I have to work closely with my PPP/Civic grouping when we win the election and I am sure we are going to be able to build on the strong foundation that has already been there.
SN: There is the question of President Bharrat Jagdeo and his role in any administration that you will run. The fact is that it is not a secret that President Jagdeo was very much influential in you being selected… seeing that you were accompanying [him] on his trips overseas and even here, particularly in the last two years there was marked increase in that frequency.
DR: The people who had to elect me were the PPP leadership. It wasn’t the masses out there… it was the membership of the PPP that formed our decision, so, I don’t see those things influencing the leadership of the party. I don’t see those things influencing the party. And let me just say that President Jagdeo is one member of the leadership of the party and influential and so are many other leaders of the party are influential leaders of the party, including myself. I don’t think that I am without influence in the PPP.
SN: Isn’t he the most influential leader?
DR: From the point of view from the government, from the point of view from being president of the country, certainly he has a lot of influence. But I don’t think that I will agree with you that I would devalue the position of the General Secretary of the PPP.
SN: His role in the government…?
DR:…We haven’t discussed that as yet. Of course, President Jagdeo has accumulated an enormous amount of experience and I think his worst critic… will have to admit that over the last five years, from 2006 to now, the country has done quite a lot [and] really surged forward…. Once President Jagdeo is available, I think that it is a resource we should use in this country. What position? We haven’t discussed those things yet, what role or what position he will play, that is still to be discussed and hammered out. But we will work on that. We have enough time to work on that.
SN: Although you haven’t discussed it as yet, do you hold a personal view of inviting him to join your cabinet?
DR: I don’t know if he will want to be, I mean being president and then come to join the cabinet. It might be something that he will probably have to consider, but I haven’t thought about it as yet.
SN: You spoke of building on the strong foundations laid by the PPP/C. In terms of going forward, what are you going to do?
DR: There are many things in the pipeline… that will obviously have to come over into this new administration. And I have said that many of these things have the ability to transform the country. They are all transformative projects that are on stream. And I am certainly going to try to see those things to fruition. But of course, we will have to start working on [the manifesto of the party] because you got to remember it is the PPP/Civic going to this election. The manifesto is not the manifesto of Donald Ramotar, the manifesto is a PPP/Civic manifesto and therefore it would have to have the input of all the people who are going forward with us into the election.
SN: Guyana has experienced some growth but the growth generally has not being as good as many would have expected and our main sectors have been badly affected, rice, sugar, bauxite, with very little value-added. What is your vision for these sectors in particular?
DR: I don’t think that I would take the same view of our goal. You will take into consideration what is happening internationally. Guyana has a very small internal market and therefore our dependence on international markets is very strong. And taking into consideration the situation internationally, of the international market, the financial and economic crises that exist internationally and these are happening to our major trading partners, the US, in particular, the fact that we have made growth I think is a very great achievement—something, I think, that many of our opponents have tried to play down. When you look at the rest of the Caribbean outside of T&T that has oil and gas, which other country in the Caribbean you could point to that made any growth near to what we have made? So, I think what we have achieved is tremendous in that regard. The second thing you asked about, some of the same projects I talked about just now are essential in value-added contribution. One of the things that held us back, particularly in processing and manufacturing, is the lack of cheap reliable energy and that is where I believe hydro-power can come in. The other issue that I think can help us to leap forward too, [and] is putting us on the cutting edge of technology, I think [is] bringing in the [fibre optic] cable from Brazil. [It] can, in a fairly big way, help us. I think that is the direction we have to go. I don’t think we have to re-invent the wheel sometimes. We can start, because of the technology that exists, we can go right up to the most modern immediately and not letting us have to go through all the stages that many other countries had to go [through] to get there.
SN: In terms of employment here, what would you say is the unemployment rate at the moment?
DR: I don’t have the figures at my disposal, but probably it is about 10%, or thereabouts. I don’t have those figures with me. But it has certainly come down a long way from what used to be.
SN: In terms of creating new jobs…
DR: For instance, information technology, I think we can very well experience a shortage of labour in this country, once we get many of these things on stream.
SN: One of the exchanges that has been coming up for sometime is the minimum monthly wage. [The unions] have put out certain figures that this should be. What figure do you think should be the minimum…
DR: Wage? The government minimum wage now is about thirty something thousand… You also got to take where we’re coming from and how we have improved. I believe as our economy improves, one of the things we should do is ensure working people are paid a fair share of… I was just speaking of the general principle of my position and as our economy improves, all working people must have a good share of what we produce in our country. I agree with trade unionists and those who say that it is not enough. I am the first to say that it is not enough, but taking into consideration first where we are coming from—when $3,107 a month in 1992 and apart from that look at the prepaid, the income tax threshold has moved from $72,000 in 1992 and is $480,000 now—the range of disposable income for people earning salaries is far, far greater than it ever was. Apart from services or many of the other services we provided, non-wage benefits, look at the amount of money we are sinking into housing, into education, into health services. If you follow internationally, these are issues that workers are fighting for tooth and nail and it is being taken away from them and here in our country nobody will be denied medical service in our country and so I think a lot of things are non-wage benefits and we have to look how much is going into these areas and these are not insignificant things. Look at the pension, it is still low I agree but we have removed the means test [and] it is about one billion dollars a year that goes into old-aged pension and one billion into social security. Look at the programmes we have to help single parents, single women, [and] particularly women. I think you have to take these things in a totality, sometimes, when you look at it, because I think that some people, particularly those who oppose, just want to paint a negative picture, but you have to take these things in a totality.
SN: Under your administration, would we see greater decentralisation of the role of the state in the economic policy?
DR: Look at the world today. It has gone to a certain kind of position where it is looking at the areas where the private sector is regarded generally as the engine of growth in the society. But there are many areas where… the private sector has not met or taken up the challenge. Like some valued-added areas. Where we produce rice, we don’t produce five-minute rice, we don’t produce one-minute rice, [and] we don’t produce several other things. We produced raw sugar all our lives, only now we are moving towards packaging and things like that. So, I would say that there could be areas where the private sector might be reluctant to go for one reason or the other. If my team is convinced that it is something which is very important for the country and I won’t rule out the possibility of the state being involved in some of these sectors.
