Current Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon in 1997 had wanted to be the presidential candidate for the PPP but this gained no traction and eventually the late President Janet Jagan was selected.
This was disclosed by former PPP stalwart Ralph Ramkarran in his column in the Sunday Stabroek yesterday. Ramkarran recalled that in 1991, having failed to structure an electoral alliance with the PCD and later with the WPA, the late former President Dr Cheddi Jagan offered to sacrifice the top spot to Luncheon to satisfy demands by Guyanese Action for Reform and Democracy (GUARD) that he was not a suitable presidential candidate. GUARD rejected the offer. Eventually, in an alliance with GUARD, Cheddi Jagan became presidential candidate and GUARD’s leader, Sam Hinds, the prime ministerial candidate, Ramkarran wrote.
He said that with the passing of Dr Jagan in 1997, the effort to compromise in the interests of national unity, or internally in the interests of party unity, ended. In 1997, Ramkarran said that Luncheon rejected several independent private initiatives suggesting a Ramkarran-Luncheon ticket for the elections of that year. He offered to support instead a