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Tension high as PPP prepares to select Presidential candidate
… Ramotar “surprised” by Ramkarran’s full page ad
By Neil Marks
As tension runs high, the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is preparing to select a presidential candidate for next year’s general election, and that decision could come by the first quarter of next year, General Secretary Donald Ramotar said yesterday.
Ramotar himself wants the job as president if the PPP wins the elections for a fifth time in a row since 1992, but he has a strong contender in the name of Ralph Ramkarran, who yesterday moved to place a full page advertisement in the local Stabroek News – a move which surprised Ramotar.
Donald Ramotar
“I am surprised that he would do that; I don’t think that is how the PPP operates,” Ramotar told a mid-morning Press Conference at the party’s Freedom House headquarters in Georgetown. With Ramotar, and Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee in the running to secure the nomination, Ramkarran has been pressing for a secret ballot to select the candidate, stating that since 1950 all-important decisions were made using that procedure.
But Ramotar did not give details about how the candidate will be selected, except to say that there will be intense discussions at the level of the executive committee, which will then leave the decision to the central committee.
In yesterday’s advertisement, Ramkarran quoted part of his letter to Ramotar, as General Secretary, indicating his interest in securing the nomination of the party as its Presidential; candidate.
“I believe that I am fully qualified to undertake the onerous responsibilities of the Presidency,” Ramkarran stated in the letter, as quoted in the advertisement.
Ramotar said that the move to place the full-page advertisement in the newspaper was a “first” for the PPP, but he would not be dragged into saying whether the move by Ramkarran was wrong.
Boasting of his own track record, Ramotar said that he has spent most of his life in the party and repeated that if he were to be nominated he would be “honoured.”
The PPP General Secretary has been seen on several public outings and overseas engagements recently with President Bharrat Jagdeo, fuelling rumours that he was being groomed for the Presidency. But Ramotar dismissed such notions.
He said he has been travelling since age 22 when he went to the Soviet Union, and thereafter travelled around the world.
He said that speculation that he was the favourite to secure the nomination given his public outings with Jagdeo, was being fuelled by the press.
Ramotar said that if he were interested in the publicity to boost his chances, he would have been calling press conferences after his trips overseas.
He said that he travelled overseas with Jagdeo at the President’s invitation. He sees nothing wrong with the President inviting him along, he said. The President has the right to take whoever he wants wherever he goes, he added.
“I don’t think it is a question of promoting my candidacy,” Ramotar declared.
In any case, Ramotar said that his travelling does not depend on the President’s schedule, since he has been travelling “quite a lot” on his own.
Civic
At yesterday’s Press conference, Ramotar highlighted a strong possibility that the PPP could be moving to shift its position that whoever is selected to be Prime Minister must come from the Civic arm of the party. That was a decision taken in to contest the elections in 1992 and the party has run its campaign this way for the past four elections.
But Ramotar suggested that the party might not still hold that “strong view.” He said the alliance of the party and its Civic component has grown and they share more common views, as was not in the case in 1990 when the alliance was forged by the late Cheddi Jagan to defeat the PNC’s 28-year rule. That was achieved on October 5, 1992 general elections.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds has served in that capacity, as a Civic member, since 1992, except for a few months in 1997, when he served as President after the death of Dr Jagan in March, 1997.
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