PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee became visibly agitated yesterday when pressed by the media as to why no one from his party had challenged former president Bharrat Jagdeo’s comparison of his lifestyle to that former presidents Cheddi and Janet Jagan, much to the disappointment of their daughter Nadira Jagan-Brancier.
Jagan-Brancier in a letter to Stabroek News stated: “My parents, as is well known, devoted and sacrificed their lives for the betterment of the people of Guyana. They did not use their position for personal gains, which would have been very easy to do…they chose to live a very simple and comfortable lifestyle. They did not lead an extravagant life. Even when they were both presidents of Guyana they maintained the same simple lifestyle they had always lived before.”
Asked by Stabroek News, at the PPP’s weekly press conference yesterday, if the party did not have an obligation to comment on the matter considering Jagan-Brancier’s clear disappointment over Jagdeo’s statements, Rohee said, “Depends on what I will say, where I will say it, and who I will say it to.”
He was pressed multiple times and became visibly agitated when members of the media fraternity asked why the PPP had not challenged Jagdeo’s remarks. Rohee said the party would not be addressing the issue at this time.
When asked whether or not the party believed that Jagdeo’s remarks would be detrimental to its campaign, given that the Jagans’ children have criticized Jagdeo’s use of the Jagan legacy, Rohee’s only response was a cryptic, “Time will Tell”. He might have been quoting Bob Marley, whose lyrics the PPP has frequently used.
In her letter, Jagan-Brancier thanked former PPP stalwart and close friend to the Jagans, Ralph Ramkarran, for defending her parents’ lifestyle. In his blog, published as a column in the Sunday Stabroek, Ramkarran called Jagdeo’s justification of “his mansion, his pension and his Cadillac lifestyle” sinful.
“The impression given by Dr Jagdeo that Cheddi Jagan built a mansion, at the time comparable to his own, in an existing exclusive area is completely false and disingenuous,” Ramkarran said.
Ramkarran, who was a member of the PPP for nearly 50 years before resigning just over two years ago, said that in the 1960s, Plantation Bel Air, as it was then known was a poor community of mainly small artisans, farm and city labourers and subsistence cattle and vegetable farmers.
He added that the PPP allowing Jagdeo’s false claims against its revered leader to go unchallenged is a “manifestation of his overweening dominance of the PPP’s agenda and narrative and its destructive character.”
Jagdeo, a former two-term president said at his press conference on Tuesday: “I don’t believe ministers should have to live in a logie to prove that they are not corrupt… Cheddi Jagan didn’t have to prove that by living in a logie”.
This was his reply when asked if he believed that his posh home at Sparendaam and the rapid accumulation of wealth by ministers would be within the late president’s ideals.
He added “I don’t think Cheddi Jagan, living in Bel Air Park at that time, in a nice house, was typical of Guyana. But Cheddi Jagan lived at that time there. Did that weaken his commitment to the cause? No.
“At that time that was a prime area. It was a big piece of land, nice house and it still is a nice house,” he said.
“Did that weaken his commitment to the cause? Did that make him corrupt or anything of the sort? What is the point they are making?
“My thing is when I built my first house, they said it was too big. Then, secondly, that I sold it for a lot of money, which is not so much now—because I know you have other people selling their houses for two and three times more than I sold mine,” he added.
He said too that Jagan would also not want them having meagre means of transportation. “Cheddi Jagan wanted us to ride motorcycles all our lives?” the former president questioned.
Over the past years Jagan-Brancier has been outspoken in her criticism of the party founded by her father. In 2012, during a memorial service for her parents, she said, “So all I want to say is if the PPP is saying that they are following Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan as a living guide, the only way they could follow Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan as a living guide is to return to basics, return to who this party is, which is a working class party. Obviously you have to support other people, but the base of the party is a working class party; get back to being a non-corruptible party so that people can’t point a finger and say there is so much corruption.”
Visibly emotional and almost in tears at the end of her short speech, she had urged those who were gathered to visit her parent’s Bel Air house which is now a heritage site and is open to the public, to see how humbly they lived compared to how government officials live at present.
“I really encourage people to go in Bel Air and see the house where they lived because they lived a very simple life; they didn’t have a big ostentatious house that you see nowadays with government officials, party officials, which is a very sad thing, I think personally,” she said in 2012.
