Are there more PPP bombshell revelations to come, Mr. Ramkarran?

Dear Editor,

In response to Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s letter, “I never said any such thing at any time and that did not happen,” (KN, July 16, 2015), I reviewed his column on the matter written in February, this year, and he is correct that his column did say, after several private initiatives suggesting a Ramkarran-Luncheon ticket, Luncheon actually preferred a Luncheon-Ramkarran ticket, but after this did not gain any traction, and neither did a Ramkarran-Hinds ticket, Luncheon then supported a Janet Jagan-Sam Hinds ticket, to which Mrs. Jagan agreed after “disingenuous and shortsighted blandishments,” whatever those meant in actuality. Late PPP insider, Lionel Peters, who once famously wrote, ‘Our Independence Constitution of 1966 is our legal and lawful Constitution’, also wrote a letter, “Janet Jagan announced she would be the presidential candidate in 1997,” (SN, October 2, 2010). In it, he said, ‘after reading Ralph Ramkarran’s carefully constructed missive on Janet Jagan’s emergence as the PPP/C presidential candidate in 1997’, he recalled Mrs. Jagan going off to Mustique Island to recuperate, and while there, she learned the party’s executive committee started discussing a presidential candidate to take over from acting President Sam Hinds, so she hurriedly arrived at Freedom House ‘and promptly announced she was taking over the position’. Of course, Peters was not present at the selection process, so his information was second-had, but even long before all of this started becoming public, it was said – whether based on actual news or rumor – that, shortly after Cheddi died, Mrs. Jagan returned home with a piece of paper with instructions purportedly signed by a dying Cheddi naming her as his successor. British tabloid, The Independent, noted (April 1, 2009), Mrs. Jagan ‘honoured his (Cheddi’s) last wish and took  over as Prime Minister and first Vice President’, and another in an interview, she reportedly said, “He said, ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to carry on’.” Now, because of the extremely secretive nature of the PPP, no one really knew who or what to believe when that ‘piece of paper instruction’ storyline broke, and this is why everything and anything about or from the PPP has to be taken ‘with a grain of salt’. Can Messrs. Nagamootoo or Ramjattan vouch for anything Mr. Ramkarran says? What really transpired in the of Cheddi’s replacement in 1997? Still, it was actually Mr. Ramkarran’s February bombshell revelation that Dr. Luncheon wanted to be President in 1997 but did not get the needed support in the PPP hierarchy, followed by (Ramkarran’s) recent revelation that PPP executive members, Gail Teixeira and Feroze Mohamed, wanted the presidential term limit issue to be taken to the electorate in a referendum during the Jagdeo presidency, that spurred me to note that it had to take his departure from the PPP before we could learn about the PPP’s shenanigans that may well explain why we are in this current quagmire. Are there more revelations to come, Mr. Ramkarran? To me, a factual error about how the process evolved that produced a PPP presidential candidate after Dr. Jagan died in 1997 pales in comparison to the frightening error and era that evolved after that selection process inside the PPP. And while I am somewhat glad that Mr. Ramkarran has chosen, belatedly, to make these revelations known, it has to be pointed out he was right there when the decisions were being made that resulted in pervasive government corruption and deterioration of the society. That error cannot be corrected, but it can, at least, be acknowledged. His revelations, so far, also could not have come at a better time for Guyanese, because the same way the PPP entertained a convoluted process in picking a replacement candidate in 1997, thereby resulting in the current government having to now clean up the PPP’s mess, the PPP has again entertained a convoluted process in picking a candidate to become PPP and Opposition Leader in 2015. How did Mr. Jagdeo go from ‘having no interest in public office again’ to displacing former President Ramotar as the next Opposition Leader? The lack of transparency or democracy inside the PPP has to become teachable lessons from those who are intimately familiar for Guyanese to learn who and what to avoid so Guyana never reverts to Jagdeoism. And to this end, Mr. Ramkarran’s long years of experience in the PPP, but especially during the Jagdeo-Ramotar era, could go a long way in helping Guyanese understand the thinking behind the PPP’s decisions and detect the early signs that could help the nation avert potential disaster. We have Pradoville I and II, but we do not need a Jagdeo I and II. Enough already!

Emile Mervin