The PPP needs open, transparent elections for a presidential candidate

Aug 12, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
First, I would like to point out that I love Guyana very dearly, and although I live overseas, I try to keep in touch with the goings-on at home at all times.

I know that the PPP just held its congress and elected its central council, from which its executive committee will be elected [selected].They, in turn, will “select” a leader to contest the next general elections in 2011.

I use the term “select” deliberately, because there is no way in a democracy 11 hand-picked individuals can decide who should be the leader of the country. If the members of the PPP were to elect a new leader, I am certain that Moses Nagamootoo would have a decided edge over the others who are being “named” in the press.

My ‘feeling’ is he has more popular grassroots support within the PPP [and to be sure, among Guyanese in general] than President Jagdeo, Janet Jagan, Robert Persaud and all the present crop of political leaders in the PPP.

I’ve known Moses since childhood. I know his family [mother, father and many of his siblings] well. I also know his wife and children even better, as we lived in the same building for three years.

I have first-hand knowledge of the sacrifices he made for the PPP [especially during the trying years of the Burnham government], and the cost to his family. I know of the sacrifices his family made for the party.

He was and still is one of the stalwarts of the PPP who does not shy away from his commitment to serve his party and the people of Guyana. He is not afraid to express his differences with the party leaders when it becomes necessary, sometimes to his personal detriment.

Once, more than six years ago, I challenged him to start a new people’s movement with some of the younger leaders in the political arena, including Raphael Trotman, Khemraj Ramjattan, Rupert Roopnarine among others: a National Progressive People’s Alliance [NPPA] to bring Guyana in unity into the 21st century.

His love for the PPP, an organisation to which he gave practically his entire life, and in which he still had faith, would not allow him then to think of “destroying” the party.

Before and after the last elections, he spoke eloquently for unity in the country and the need for consultation and “shared governance.”

I remember him saying how it would be great if a group of scholars, without political affiliation, from within and maybe outside of Guyana, were commissioned to study the political and economic plans [platforms-manifestos] of the two major parties to find the common grounds, [he thought there were many] and make recommendations on how the parties can work together to bring these common goals to fruition for the benefit of all Guyanese.

I know that many of the leaders within the PPP accused Moses of being ambitious, as if ambition was a horribly negative trait.

I asked then, as I do now: can all the others who claim to be leaders truthfully say they are without ambition?

The rank and file membership of the party should challenge the leadership of the PPP to hold open, transparent, coercion-free elections for the presidential candidate; unless of course, they [the leaders] are afraid that Moses Nagamootoo will win and unite the country, and in essence rob them of their present privileged positions.
Dr. Lionel Sewpershad

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