It’s not a sin for anyone to aspire to high office!

Oct 30, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
In his letter captioned, “The truth has too many legs”, (Kaieteur News October 28), former PPP activist and Mirror journalist Lionel Peters claims Dr. Joey Jagan was promoted by his parents as their successor and that Joey has had aspirations to becoming President.
I dare say it is not a sin for anyone to aspire to high office and I think Joey would have made a fine President. He impressed me with some of his analyses as well as policy programmes for Guyana.
Joey has launched a series of attacks against me and my polls, but this in no way comprises my penchant for truthful comments about the good doctor.
Lionel, as a PPP insider, is in a better position to analyse the controversial issue of succession and I don’t have information to dispute or confirm his claims. But I did have brief conversations with some PPP stalwarts about succession and Joey.
I do not know of any machinations by the parents to impose Dr. Joey as their successor. No one ever made that claim to me in several conversations I had with stalwarts of the PPP.
But there were suspicions, among some, that Joey’s rise in the PPP as a parliamentarian in 1997 was designed to ultimately make him successor.
However, no one took Joey’s parliamentary status as a likely successor to President Janet Jagan seriously. Bharrat Jagdeo was the youth figure in the trio that led the PPP into the elections.
I spoke with Cheddi on a few occasions about succession and he always stated that the party would decide that matter. Joey’s name was not among those mentioned by him as his potential successors.
He thought Joey was too temperamental to be a successful politician and seemed to have had greater faith in his daughter, Nadira, who seemed to have more of a socialist inclination having been trained in Moscow.
Cheddi was a doctrinaire classical Marxist and I don’t think he would have considered Joey, an avowed capitalist, as his successor.
In addition, Joey was also a regular critic of the PPP during his father’s tenure as President and I am told he often picketed Ministries.
Maternal instincts are somewhat different and it won’t surprise me if Janet exhibited feelings, in private, for her son as a potential successor.
There is nothing wrong with that. In conversations with some leading figures in the PPP right after Cheddi’s death in March 1997, they told me that Janet had asked them to assist Joey with political lessons and to make him feel welcome in the PPP.
“You all must help the boy”, one told me of instructions from Janet. But I don’t interpret that to mean to prepare him for the Presidency.
Nevertheless, I think Joey would have made a good President with counsel from senior figures. I can vouch for opinion surveys I did some years ago that Joey scored high numbers, highest among opposition figures, in the NACTA polls for popularity as a Presidential contender.
He would have been a perfect consensus candidate to attract voters from both sides of the racial divide. I believe that had Joey stayed with the PPP instead of resigning, he would have climbed his way to the top of the politics in the party.
With regards to Joey’s activities while in the US, I, along with colleagues Dr. Baytoram Ramharack, Vassan Ramracha and others, organised many anti-dictatorial events.
I don’t recollect seeing Joey at any one. Other ACG members would turn out in force. However, I do remember very well when the World Union of Guyanese meeting was launched by Dr. Fenton Ramsahoye on Liberty Avenue (124 Street) around 1990, Joey showed up and questioned, “why the meeting was called” and queried “where was Fenton all these years”.
That meeting was organised by Dr. Ravi Dev, Ramracha, Ramharack, late Hassan Rahaman, and myself and we had no hidden motives.
This in no way suggests that he was not active behind the scenes or that he did not provide support for the anti dictatorial struggle. I also know that Dr. Joey spoke at a few public meetings, one of which I and Ramracha helped to organise at City College around 1980 when we were in student government. Ralph Gonzalves, now PM of St. Vincent, also spoke at the meeting. Ramracha was the treasurer of student government that funded the event.
Vishnu Bisram

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