Groupthink: Ralph Ramkarran comes in from the cold

Mar 21, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Have you read the book, “The Spy Who came in from the Cold” or saw the movie with the same name? TIME magazine includes the book in its pick of the best 100 novels ever written. For many experts, it is the best spy novel ever authored.
One of the lessons offered by the book is that when you belong to groupthink, it becomes impossible to tell the difference between fact and fiction. I have never joined a political party even though I was with the Working People’s Alliance from the time it was born. I am very close to the Alliance For Change but I doubt I would take out a membership card.
I have always been afraid of groupthink. It is a deadly psychological killer. It reduces the mind and soul of a human being. Today, the PPP has become a monster that not only successfully stalked this land but almost devoured it. And the blame can be laid at the doorstep of Dr. and Mrs. Janet Jagan.
Professor Clement Seecharan is the latest condemnatory voice against the Jagdeo claim, that Cheddi Jagan had an elevated lifestyle given the fancy, expensive house he lived in. Dr. Seecharan, like all those before him, including Mrs. Jagan’s personal assistant, Sadie Amin, has commented on the very ordinary income and existence of the two Jagans.
A word about Sadie Amin which reveals the power and psychosis of groupthink. I approached Ms. Amin one evening at the bar of the NAACIE trade union. I asked her how she can conceivably vote as a member of the Council of the University for Dr. James Rose to be the Vice Chancellor of UG. I will never forget her groupthink response; “Freddie, I am a communist, I belong to a communist party, I follow and will always follow what my party tells me”.
Once you mention the two Jagans, the incontrovertible fact automatically comes up – they were humble people who had no lust for any kind of wealth. As the days and months go by, we will hear more facts on how modest were the lifestyle of the Jagans. And we will respect those facts.
But as much as we respect the Jagans for their ordinary income, we must read between the lines. The Jagans were simple, incorruptible people but their politics invented groupthink in the PPP and their politics is responsible for the canopy of evil with which the PPP is now wrapped.
Ralph Ramkarran is leading the way in providing researchers with material to generate revisionist conclusions.
I have consistently called on Ralph Ramkarran and Henry Jeffrey not just to write scathingly about the PPP, but tell us what they saw for all the decades they were inside the PPP and its government. Jeffrey is not the type who will care to do so. But Ralph Ramkarran has come in from the cold.
Two startling facts Ramkarran has given us will cause researchers to take out their fine-teeth comb. First was the insistence of Mrs. Jagan that she will run for the Presidency in 1997 after Roger Luncheon sought it and got rejected.
Now Ramkarran tells us about an intriguing incident. Then President Jagdeo rebuffed Mrs Jagan over the withdrawal of advertisements from the Stabroek News by referring to her as an ordinary citizen. He, Ramkarran, wanted to confront Jagdeo on Jagdeo’s insult and asked Mrs. Jagan to let him reply. Mrs. Jagan refused.
Two curiosities arise here. Why Ramkarran had to ask Mrs. Jagan to do what was morally the right thing for someone with the standing of Ramkarran? Surely, Mr. Ramkarran had to know that given his tall stature in the PPP he didn’t need Mrs. Jagan’s permission. The answer is groupthink. The Jagans made sure that everything and everyone in the PPP revolved around them, so it was simply instinctive for Ramkarran to make sure he knew how Mrs. Jagan was thinking.
Secondly, why did Mrs. Jagan stop Ramkarran? Because no matter how sick an act, how depraved a fault, how criminal a habit, how immoral an utterance that was found inside the PPP leadership, Mrs. Jagan would have tolerated it and swept it under the rug because the party must not be criticized and there must not be any dissention in the party.
The PPP is not the Jaganite party it once was because groupthink destroyed it when everyone fell in line and bowed to Mrs. Jagan’s edict that a very nincompoop, unknown member become the President in 1999 when she chose to resign. She chose Bharrat Jagdeo. Mrs, Jagan turned out to be more destructive than Jagdeo himself.

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Groupthink: Ralph Ramkarran comes in from the cold

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