Who nominated Janet Jagan to be the presidential candidate in 1997?

Oct 11, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
A lot has been written about the well-serving democratic process(es) within the PPP Executive Committee that saw the ‘selection’ of Janet Jagan as the party’s presidential candidate back in 1997. In fact so well-serving it has been that the party has vowed to continue the same process it has employed over the last 60 years.
Of all the accounts I have read in the press, including the most recent one by Lionel Peters, none has reported on: Who exactly stood up in the Ex-Com meeting and uttered these words, “I beg to nominate Comrade Janet Jagan to be presidential candidate”. And, who stood up to second the motion?
From all the accounts I have read, it appears that Janet Jagan stood up at the meeting and said, “Comrades I will take the position of leader”, and no one dared to oppose her. Janet Jagan simply usurped and violated the trust bestowed upon her as matriarch and wife of the founder-leader-for-life, Cheddi Jagan.
Has this system served the party well? Or is it a system that allows a small group of 15 so-called Ex-Com people to practice the worst form of cronyism and nepotism?
The values – and ways of thinking today – are different from those of 60 years ago when Cheddi Jagan sent emissaries to study Jamaica’s party’s constitution, and which he adopted for his newly-found party in 1950. The ideas and principles of that era were designed to perpetuate the founder-leader as leader until death.
Today the values and political practices that nations follow are all about empowering the largest number of people. It is time for the party to give that power to all of the members of the party. Let the 2,500 members vote freely to elect a new leader and presidential candidate. Do not buck the trend of modern societies. End cronyism.
The selection of the nominee is over.
The evidence is staring you in the face: Ramotar is the anointed one. He has all but been “selected and announced”. Such age-old out-dated practices of electing a new president in a de facto one party state is nothing, if not an anachronism in the modern, democratic era that began in 1992.
What is most alarming about this whole process is that candidates Ramkarran and Nagamootoo, notwithstanding their popularity among the rank and file members, chose not to challenge the ruling clique openly in the party. Some advice for these latter two lawyers: Sometimes one has to challenge the status quo, even to the point of destroying the institution in order to save it.
Mike Persaud

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Who nominated Janet Jagan to be the presidential candidate in 1997?

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