Dear Editor,
I write in response to Christopher Ram’s letter captioned `A movement once famous for its values and Rodneyite principles is now deeply involved in attempt to rig 2020 elections’ which appeared in Stabroek News’ (SN) Saturday June 13, 2020 edition. I propose in my response to expose Ram for the blatant liar he is while at the same time, raise questions about his duplicitous behaviour. Even as I write I am not sure that my letter would be exposed in SN because Ram enjoys a very healthy relationship with the Editor-in-Chief. It is not unusual to find the publication of certain letters being negatively impacted as a result of the close relationship between persons.
At the outset I wish to state that Ram, who poses as a paragon of virtue and as a practitioner and respecter of democratic norms in the society, is not averse to using his enormous wealth and the Courts, to stymie the efforts of his critics, particularly those persons like myself, when we demand from him public explanations about allegations made against him that are similar and consistent to those he levels against his opponents.
Let me also state here that since March 2019, subsequent to Ram filing a matter against me in the courts, there have been several public, provocative attacks on my person by him, which I have ignored, not out of fear of him, but primarily because I have enormous respect for the protocols of the judicial system in Guyana. Because Ram, an officer of the courts, has not demonstrated the same respect for the Courts, I am no longer prepared to exercise restraint in the face of the vicious attacks by Ram on my person, my party – the WPA – and my close comrades, Professor Clive Thomas, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, Dr. Maurice Odle, Tacuma Ogunseye and those unnamed persons who by inference, he felt free to attack in the SN edition referred to above.
Ram should tell the truth about why he is so angry with Dr. Roopnaraine, Ogunseye, me and the WPA. As he has not done so I will. It has to do with a discussion he had, first with Roopnaraine and subsequently with Ogunseye in the leadup to the 2015 general and regional elections when he was asked if he would allow his name to be put forward as the WPA’s choice for the Prime Ministerial slot on the APNU’s list of candidates for those elections. The APNU+AFC arrangements for those elections were not yet being discussed and it was felt by some executive members of the WPA that a candidate of Indian origin, should be identified by the organization, whose name would be advanced as a possible replacement for Dr. Roopnaraine, who had indicated to the Executive that while he was prepared to participate in the 2015 campaign he did not want to do so in such a high profile position. The point to note is that the approach to Ram was not formally agreed by the Executive, because within that grouping there were persons, including me, who were opposed to it. What was however agreed was that no barrier would have been imposed on the persons who had advanced the proposal to approach Ram on it. Hence, his discussions with Roopnaraine and Ogunseye.
My opposition to the proposal which I explained to Ram when he approached me to support it, had to do with what I believed was his unsuitability for the position. In fact, the exact words I used at the Executive meeting and to him was that “politically, I consider him to be a wild cannon and an unguided missile, whose candidacy would have disastrous consequences for the APNU”. I had also told the Executive and Ram that in the elections, persons who were inclined to support the APNU would have been hard pressed to do so if his name appeared on the APNU’s list of candidates, particularly in such a critical position, bearing in mind that he, Ram, had publicly baptised the announced ticket of the AFC – Moses Nagamootoo and Nigel Hughes – as the best possible one to face the electorate.
My understanding was that in the discussion Ram had with Ogunseye it was made clear to him that the matter was still being discussed in the WPA and was not agreed. He was advised that in the circumstance he should allow the WPA’s discussion to be concluded. But, politically backward as he is, or, with the intention of forcing an early favourable decision in the WPA, he then proceeded to tell every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane who had the time to listen that he was the anointed APNU Prime Ministerial candidate and he was preparing to renounce his British citizenship. Eventually, the bubble burst when the APNU+AFC arrangement was brokered and Nagamootoo was announced as the coalition’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Ram was devastated by the news and became very obsessive in his criticisms of the WPA and particularly of Roopnaraine, Ogunseye and me. I challenge him also to deny that he also harboured thoughts of being proposed for the position of Speaker of the National Assembly after the Coalition’s victory in the 2015 elections.
It is true that Ram’s initial involvement with the WPA Executive was when specific subjects were being discussed. However, that gradually changed and from around 2005 he became a fixture on that organ. He participated in several policy decisions in the party and proposed matters for discussions for which he held strong views, including his description of the Jagdeo and Ramotar regimes as being the most corrupt in the world. Statistical genius that he is, he, up to and including the 2015 election on several occasions, advanced the position and produced empirical data to support his argument, that the voters list had been bloated for years and that it required a new house to house registration exercise to guarantee satisfaction across the board, for the results emanating from the holding of elections. That he has now conveniently changed his position is as a result of where he is now located in the political landscape.
Periodically, Ram, would have made small, personal donations to the party. Like most businessmen he indulged in what is known as ‘hedging his bets’. In other words, he donated to several parties at the same time, particularly to the larger parties, which received considerable amounts, thereby ensuring he was a beneficiary of largesse from which ever party won. Even as he criticised the APNU+AFC coalition government for every offence under the sun he, unashamedly, accepted contracts worth millions of dollars from it.
On several occasions Ram, without an explanation for doing so, would abruptly stop his donations to the WPA. On those occasions I would say to party comrades that he was most likely responding to an unpleasant situation, which might have occurred the previous night. I recall a particular situation, subsequent to his stopping of a monthly donation, when he gave as his reasons for doing so the failure of Roopnaraine and Jocelyn Dow, both of whom were Board members at Cara Lodge, for failing to keep a promise. It is also true that during the 2015 elections he, along with Dr. Maurice Odle, comprised a WPA fund raising team. What he has not said is that the major slice of the money raised came from sources close to Dr. Odle.
In his self-serving criticism of a number of WPA members Ram said “Judging by their public roles, the leading active members of the Party are Desmond Trotman, Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds. The first holds the PNC line in GECOM. Ogunseye remains committed to the romantic notion of a liberation struggle and Hinds’ dismissal of elections moves him sharply away from the WPA’s embrace of multicultural relationships and free and fair elections and closer to the promotion of an increasingly strident brand of African rights”. I will address the aspects of the quoted sentences in his letter pertaining to me. Ogunseye and Hinds are adequately endowed with the ability to address his utterances, if they care to.
I am assuming here that when Ram said I was holding the PNC line in GECOM he purported to mean that the PNC’s line was/is about rigging the elections and I am party to that course of action. I therefore make the following points: –
(1) I was appointed a Commissioner of GECOM by President Granger about one week after WPA issued a statement, which I helped to craft, that said under no circumstances will it support or condone the rigging of elections. That to my mind says a lot about President Granger’s posture on elections in Guyana.
(2). Since my appointment to the position of Commissioner I have never been asked or told by President Granger or by any of the other leaders of the PNCR, to support any position that is not my own.
(3). The only positions I can be accused of adopting at GECOM’s meetings are the historical WPA’s positions. The records of GECOM’s meetings will show that
(a) I had in the lead up to the 2020 Local Government Elections proposed that persons/organisations interested in participating in those elections, should, in addition to parties represented in parliament, be invited to attend discussion sessions as part of the familiarization process, prior to the day appointed as nomination day.
(b) On several occasions I have said that elections do one of two things, they either confirm the incumbents or replace them with another group, that I do not care which party wins once the results are accepted by the populace at large thereby allowing the country to move forward in peace and harmony.
(c) I described the behaviour of the then UNDP Resident Representative, Madam Tanaka, in ignoring the established protocols for assistance to GECOM, as being disrespectful and obscene and that the Commission should say that to her.
(d) I told the representatives of the A, B, C, and E countries that GECOM is an independent Agency and cannot be dictated to by those countries.
(d) During the familiarization meeting that the advanced EU observation team had with GECOM, a member of the team indicated that as part of their process of observing the elections they will have to sit in at statutory meetings of the Commission. I made it very clear that while I will welcome any assistance that will enhance the work of the Commission, I will not sit at meetings of the Commission where a representative of a foreign power is permitted to monitor meetings of the Commission. It never happened.
(e) I said to the Carter Center observation team which was led by President Carter’s grandson when he outlined to the Commission the Center’s proposal for holding elections in 2019, I could not support it because it failed to consider the internal dynamics in this country
(f) I resolutely defended the Chair-man, in the Commission, against the brutal attacks directed to her by the three PPP Commissioners.
(g) Notwithstanding the fact that nearly all of the small parties, which contested the elections could not field polling and counting agents in a large number of polling stations, that their participation at the Recount Exercise should not be limited to only overseeing the process in the districts they contested. They should be allowed to participate in the entire exercise.
I have had cause to say in a private discussion to the US Ambassador, Madam Sarah Lynch, that in doing what the President of Guyana was not doing that is, meeting with Commissioners for private discussions, she ran the risk of being accused of interfering in the affairs of Guyana.
I have also as a Commissioner, publicly declared that when the Canadian High Commissioner forced her way into a meeting of GECOM Commissioners at Ashmins building, she acted as if she was the country’s new colonial overlord and should be recalled.
These are some of the positions, I have taken, unapologetically, within and outside of GECOM, wearing my hat of a GECOM Commissioner. I stand by my actions. These are positions which Rodney, Kwayana, Thomas, Roopnaraine, Bhagwan, Westmaas Ogunseye, Kanhai, Henderson, Odle, Jocelyn Dow, Godfrey Sage, Stanley Humphrey, Ali Majeed, the sisters and other comrades named and unnamed and all of the WPA, would I believe, lend their unconditional support to. If Ram has difficulties with those positions all he would be doing is confirming what I have always thought, he was really a WPA supporter purely as a matter of convenience.
Incidentally, almost all of the positions identified above have been supported by Commissioners Alexander and Corbin who have always insisted they are Constitutional Office holders not party hacks. What that makes them? Ram, I applaud the work of those two Commissioners in the Commission. If you have proof of our collective involvement in what you have said is rigging the results of the 2020 General and Regional Elections, provide it to the police As far as I am aware it is unlawful tor anyone to falsify the results of the elections. Similarly, if an officer of the court has information of such an act being committed and refuses to pass the information to the police of a crime he is to my mind, complicit in the commission of an offence. Ram must either put up or shut up.
In the matter of his appearance on behalf of WPA in the Rodney Inquiry I was not one of the persons who instructed him. He has his facts wrong.
Ram’s relationship with the WPA Executive and the Party was terminated after he attended a social gathering and was heard making scurrilous statements about the Party. That assault on the WPA was made in the presence of a senior WPA Executive member who reported the matter to the collective. If I recall correctly, I was the Chairman of the Executive at the time and I proposed, and it was agreed that in light of the report he should no longer be allowed to sit at the meetings. In conveying the decision to him I indicated the reason and the source of the information, which he did not deny.
But we must be concerned that hypocrites like Ram see nothing wrong with the persons who are PPP Commissioners who have made it very clear that they are instructed by their party and assiduously represent that party’s views at meetings of the Commission He condemns the non PPP Commissioners without providing proof to support his allegations that these Commissioners hold the PNC line at meetings of the Commission. I find this to be very sinister. It has serious implications for the state of affairs in Guyana in the immediate period ahead, in the medium and long term.
If I am asked to say how I see Ram I would say (i) a person who badly craves attention who would provide sociologists with amazing material for case study; and (ii) a person whose opportunism moves him uncontrollably, like goat dung blown in the wind (in America the parallel is known as tumbleweed), from position to position and from political party to political party.
Walter Rodney lives!
Yours faithfully,
Desmond Trotman