An alarming correspondence

Aug 14, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s correspondence (SN Aug 13) critical of my thinking on the recent PPP congress and on a particular issue in relation to him is alarming, more for its omissions rather than its contents.

What follows are my responses to Mr. Ramkarran’s caustic remarks on my methodology. First, Mr. Ramkarran could not have been referring to me about rumours of his non-acceptance of a PPP invitation to be its presidential candidate. I have never written a line about that.

My unshakeable contestation is that Mr. Ramkarran is only interested in that position and no other. I have written about this before. That is both an opinion and a belief.

Secondly, Mr. Ramkarran owes it to the public to tell us if he was ever offered a cabinet post since 1992. If no, then that puts the matter to rest. If yes, he should state so.

He does not have to explain his reasons for not serving. Thirdly, what I wrote on the congress and my subsequent shift is normal in the work of any commentator. It happens all the time around the world.

I did my analysis based on my knowledge that not one single PPP congress since the fifties has been untainted.

Within that framework, I evaluated some strange voting patterns. On Sunday last, I read Mr. Ramkarran telling SN that there was lobbying against him.

I became curious and contacted two delegates that I consider friends. I phoned a central committee member I share a very good relation with over the long years.

The feeling of nationalist respect between us is mutual. I swear on my parents’ grave that person is not Moses Nagamootoo.

All three of them told me that two senior party functionaries on the Saturday morning were lobbying against Mr. Ramkarran on the basis that he is only interested in serving the PPP as the President. All three told me that they did not vote for him.

My judgment was that the criticism was effective and Mr. Ramkarran’s showing may have been a factual occurrence. Mr. Ramkarran admitted in his interview with SN that there was a campaign against him.

He should tell us what were some of the things said. Thirdly, in 1997, the PPP chose the combination of Mrs. Jagan and Sam Hinds to go into the elections.

Mrs. Jagan proposed a third party formula, meaning that there should be a president in waiting if she should not be able to continue since the Civic cannot hold that office. Mrs. Jagan recommended Mr. Ramkarran.

A few persons felt that Mr. Ramkarran had cited his law practice as the reason for not sitting in the cabinet and that again he was advancing the cause of his law practice.

Mr. Moses Nagamootoo was one of the strong dissenting voices. Mr. Ramkarran was dropped and Bharrat Jagdeo replaced him.

In 1997 the A-Team was announced with Mrs. Jagan, Sam Hinds and Mr. Jagdeo. Mrs. Jagan won, then resigned and that is how Mr. Jagdeo became President.

Mr. Ramkarran is known to me as a person who creates reality and fiction through his unusual approach either to epistemology or deconstruction.

He puts his own semantic interpretations to expressions and based on that he decides what are truths or what are fictions.

Let me give readers an example. I once classified a meeting of the executive committee of the PPP as evil.

Mr. Ramkarran then said that no such meeting occurred. I was shocked because I named the date and time of the meeting.

It was Khemraj Ramjattan who explained to me what Mr. Ramkarran meant. Mr. Ramkarran rejected the label of “evil” and since for him the meeting was not evil.

Then an evil meeting did not take place. Mr. Ramkarran then said that the meeting I wrote about did not take place.

This is good reasoning when you are debating the philosophy of Hume and Kant but it has no place in the arena of practical politics.

Mr. Ramkarran loves this kind of theorizing. Let me quote from his Sunday SN letter; “No such thing happened in real life, at least not in the PPP.”

What is this thing that did not happen? It was the CLASH (emphasis mine) between Ramkarran and Nagamootoo in 1997.

You see I may have written the word “clash” in one of my pieces. Now since he does not consider that there was a “clash” then for him no such exchange occurred.

What Mr. Ramkarran leaves out was the attitude of Mr. Nagamootoo and others to him being named the third party.

I guess Mr. Ramkarran will reply and say he was not the third party because a party is something where music plays and you eat, drink and dance.
Frederick Kissoon

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An alarming correspondence

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