Former President Donald Ramotar says that he is “unlikely” to be named a Member of Parliament for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic.
Speaking to Stabroek News briefly yesterday, Ramotar said there has been no confirmation as yet but that he did not see himself in the National Assembly. The former president did not entertain any questions in relation to the leadership of the party and his political career moving forward.
Although he is the immediate past president and is an executive member of the PPP, Ramotar’s indication that he will not represent the party in Parliament rules him out as the Leader of the Opposition which both he and former president Bharrat Jagdeo had been considered for.
His non-appearance in Parliament would be a remarkable development as he was the party’s presidential candidate for the last two general elections.
Since the 2015 General and Regional Elections the PPP, through its General Secretary Clement Rohee, has remained tight-lipped about the party’s plans for heading into the National Assembly. So far the PPP has not attended the three sittings since the opening of the 11th Parliament and is yet to provide the Guyana Elections Commission with its list of 32 members.
By contrast after the 2011 General and Regional Elections, the PPP government took less than 48 hours to submit its 32 MPs list to Gecom.
At the party’s weekly press briefings, Rohee has routinely brushed aside questions in relation to the party’s leadership. When asked directly if Jagdeo would head the opposition, Rohee said “let’s wait until we go to parliament and then we will see who stands where.”
At a recent decision-making forum of the party, Jagdeo was hailed as the leader according to well-placed sources. Jagdeo was credited with being largely responsible for the PPP/C gathering an extra 38,000 votes at the 2015 general elections. Critics have however noted that it was gained on the back of a divisive campaign of scaremongering and race-baiting.
In his column in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, former longstanding PPP executive Ralph Ramkarran condemned the reported decision that Jagdeo would be Opposition Leader, saying that the party had lost its way.
“The selection of Dr Bharrat Jagdeo by the Central Committee of the PPP as its nominee for Opposition Leader seals that party’s fate in opposition for decades to come, unless the APNU+AFC coalition underperforms or unravels. The PPP has been shattered by defeat, its leadership disgraced by corruption and it has lost the sympathy of the international community through abuse, corruption and the refusal to hold local government elections”, he declared.
He said that Jagdeo’s name emerged initially from among the ruling clique in the Executive Committee.
In the contest between Jagdeo and Ramotar at the Central Committee, Ramkarran said that Ramotar received only 9 votes of 35 voting members.
“It must have been hugely embarrassing. Being fought down by Dr Jagdeo, his mentor, at whose insistence, and not through popular sentiment, he became the presidential candidate in 2011, would have been a bitter pill to swallow, especially since he is the immediate past president”, Ramkarran said.
Worse, Ramkarran said, was the virtual abandonment of Ramotar by the Central Committee of which he was general secretary for 15 years. He said that Ramotar ignored the fact that Jagdeo’s “insatiable ego cannot be satisfied by fraternal considerations or rational calculations.
In any event, Mr Ramotar apparently did not realize that with the loss of two elections and Dr Jagdeo’s grip on the leadership, his political career was over.”
Ramkarran said that Ramotar would justify continued low-level activism by deluding himself that he is maintaining party unity.
“This has always been the answer to his failure to respond to Dr Jagdeo’s most egregious behaviour. This silent approbation allowed serious schisms to arise within the party, which remained unaddressed.
The worst was the resignations of (Khemraj) Ramjattan and (Moses) Nagamootoo that led directly to the PPP’s loss of power. This damage to the PPP, Mr Ramotar’s ill-fated decision to seek the candidacy for president in 2011, despite Dr Jagdeo’s support and the ruling clique’s rejection of a national unity government, have together brought the PPP to its knees”, Ramkarran asserted.
He chastised the party of which he was a member for nearly 50 years for missing a national unity opportunity.
“The PPP has made, arguably, the most egregious blunder in its entire history by failing to implement Cheddi Jagan’s ‘shared governance’ or ‘winner does not take all’ policies in political conditions in 2011, where it could have been easily sold to its supporters. The PPP would have had to make fundamental concessions and share power in circumstances of equality where it would not ‘dominate or be dominated’ ‒ a policy also advocated by Jagan. The national unity thereby created would have transformed Guyana and revolutionized our politics. Our nation would once again have been able to aspire to 1950 and bring within reach our motto of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny.’ But President Ramotar had made it plain in 2011 that power sharing ‘would not happen.’ The ruling clique of the PPP has deliberately killed the dream of unity and is on its way to Parliament to bury it”, Ramkarran declared.
