The PPP has a transparent leadership process, its campaign manager, Robert Persaud, said yesterday in response to accusations made by former member, Moses Nagamootoo, that the party’s internal elections were rigged.
“When you are dissatisfied with the results you would say that the process was fraudulent and that is unfounded. The same process that is used with the leadership elections of the PPP is the same process that has been used from the time Mr Nagamootoo joined [the party],” Persaud said in response to a question from Stabroek News at the party’s weekly media update.
He emphasized that there has been no change or deviation from that process. He explained that when the elections of the PPP’s Congress are done, “the ballots are counted openly and members are free to observe…. It is not done locked away in some room.
“So even when we talk of free and fair elections and counting at the place of poll and having observers, we practice that in our internal democracy.”
Persaud later described Nagamootoo, who parted ways with the ruling party and officially joined the Alliance for Change this week, as “a sour and disgruntled loser”.
The new AFC member, speaking at a post-nomination rally on Thursday had said that the PPP leaders have betrayed their supporters and he accused a “cabal” of rigging the party’s elections and “manufacturing” the presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar.
In a blistering attack on the PPP’s leadership as he appeared on the AFC’s platform for the first time, Nagamootoo told a sizeable crowd that for years the PPP fought against fraudulent elections and it was bad when it was laid at the feet of former president Forbes Burnham and the PNC. “But our leaders have vindicated the worst fears of decent people.
They rigged the internal elections to manufacture a presidential candidate,” charged Nagamootoo.
Nagamootoo went further to say that the PPP did not allow its members to evaluate the candidates and decide on merit, which one was more qualified to lead the party into this year’s elections. He had joined the race to be the PPP presidential candidate earlier this year but withdrew after his plea for the wider membership of the party to have a say in the process was rejected.
“They have betrayed the followers and not only that, every time they went to a congress and they would elect their leaders to the leadership of the party, an internal cabal controlled by [President Bharrat] Jagdeo and financed by Jagdeo and fed by Jagdeo will undo the results of the congress,” he said.
