Dear Editor,
There is much to be said about President Ramotar’s recent address at Babu Jaan. In reality, Mr Ramotar is residing in a delusional world with his shallow rhetoric. Can you imagine in this day and age President Ramotar can claim that “the character of Cheddi Jagan cannot be severed from the party [PPP]”? The truth and reality remain: the party has abandoned the ideals of Jagan for more than a decade now. One only has to refer to the speech from Nadira Jagan, the daughter of Cheddi Jagan, when she said the following a year ago:
“My parents were probably the most incorruptible people you would ever find; their honesty and integrity were of very high standards, but unfortunately that does not exist or I don’t see it in many of the leaders of the party and the government.”
President Ramotar failed miserably in a classic Stalinist style as he attempted to tell the people a story that is tantamount to saying that Cheddi would have subscribed to the house worth many millions in Pradoville 2 and the $3 million a month presidential pension package, and so on. What poppycock!
As the General Secretary of the PPP, Mr Ramotar and his comrades use Cheddi’s name but as Nadira Jagan said, “they fail to live up really and truly to what her parents had stood for.” Ms Jagan noted that her parents lived very simple lives: “The house is there and I really encourage people to use the opportunity to go in Bel Air and see the house where they lived… They lived a very simple life; they didn’t have big ostentatious homes that you see nowadays that government officials and party officials have…” she said in her address last year.
After more than a decade of deceit, it is clear as daylight to the Guyanese people that the PPP is living off the sweat of the people whom Cheddi really loved − the working class and the poor and downtrodden. In Nadira Jagan’s words, “… I think the party has moved away − not the party but certain elements in the party − from these very, very important values that held the party together and what makes the PPP what it is, and so for me, when I look at some of the things happening, my parents may not be turning in their graves, but they must be churning up in the waters of the rivers [in which their ashes were sprinkled].”
From our perspective, the PPP vote train is running out of fuel. Those who are on it will have to face reality in the next general elections.
Yours faithfully,
Asquith E Rose
Harish S Singh