One has to wonder who is really in control of this country

Nov 29, 2012 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I think Freddie Kissoon’s analysis of Donald Ramotar is spot-on (“Amidst bombs, guns and dead bodies, a lesson I learnt”, KN, Nov. 21, 2012). Peeping Tom still refuses to accept the truth. Kissoon notes that Donald Ramotar has always been a second fiddle kind of guy, a man who has always been overshadowed by and has always intellectually surrendered to more brilliant minds in the PPP.
The Jagans were bang-on regarding Ramotar. They never saw him fit for any national profile or leadership role like ministerial duties and we are seeing exactly why. They intimately knew Donald Ramotar and his shortcomings of confidence. Donald Ramotar is no leader. Most definitely not the kind of leader Guyana desperately needs. He is not confrontational and does not possess the confidence, passion, desire, hunger and work ethic of Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Ralph Ramkarran and Moses Nagamootoo.
The PPP has disintegrated as a party under his watch. Donald Ramotar also has unwavering allegiance to the PPP. He lives for the PPP. It is his entire life substance. Therein lies the problem. Ramotar’s dedication to the PPP blinds him to its faults. He will serve the party and the party will command him, no matter who has hijacked it. These are key facets of Ramotar’s personality and his ideology and after 40 years, he cannot change them. It is these attributes of him that leads me to my theory; that Donald Ramotar was carefully identified and targeted by the Jagdeoites for the presidency because of these characteristics.
Donald Ramotar could not become president without the support of the Jagdeoites. They control the PPP Central Committee. They ensured that control by suspending a party general congress now for over a year because they feared being voted out by an angry PPP membership. They determine who becomes the PPP presidential candidate, and in turn, who becomes president. They handpicked Ramotar because of his easygoing manner, his love of the party, his ability to be easily manipulated, his non-confrontational style, his lack of confidence and his inexperience in any kind of governance.
To the Jagdeoites, Ramotar was the ideal man to keep their gravy train flowing. He tends to accept things on face value. He lacks the cunning necessary to navigate the Jagdeoites and their leaders. He will concede rather than confront when wrongdoing occurs. He will accept and condone a lot of venality for fear of exposing the party to backlash. So, the Jagdeoites could do whatever wrongdoing they want, knowing Ramotar would not rock the boat because he fears the impact on the party.
The Jagdeoites knew that unlike Nagamootoo or Ramkarran, Ramotar could be easily manipulated and that he lacks the probity to think independently. He must rely on them at every turn, and this enables them to control him. They knew Ramotar would rather accept skulduggery from them than to confront them for fear of internal squabbling making the PPP look bad.
None of the Jagdeoites could have run for the presidency in 2011 without the PPP risking losing the election. They are all deeply unpopular. Nagamootoo or Ramkarran would have guaranteed the PPP a majority in 2011. However, the Jagdeoites had no room for independent thinkers. They cost the PPP its majority by going with Ramotar who delivered a minority government instead.
Even worse, his insipid performance in the past year has plummeted the party’s fortunes. The PPP is bleeding votes from its supporters. Its own internal polls paint a dismal future. Even worse, the invincibility of the PPP has been dashed. The fear-mongering by the Jagdeoites about the effects of the PPP having a reduction of power has not materialized.
Many PPP supporters are seeing this new arrangement with the split in power as a necessary new check and balance on the tyrants who have hijacked the PPP. Because he lacked confidence and was handpicked, Donald Ramotar had to run on a campaign of continuing Jagdeo’s legacy, one of the worst legacies in this country’s history. He was a mere shadow behind Jagdeo on the campaign trail.
After the election was over, Ramotar picked more Jagdeoites to Cabinet than Jagdeo himself. Jagdeo himself did not pick certain people in his cabinet, but Ramotar did.  It was the very emblem of shamefulness. Donald Ramotar has developed the convenient blindness to corruption and wrongdoing in the PPP. Quickly too. It is tragic how quickly he lost the moral moorings some claimed he had.
One has to wonder who is really in control of this country. Ramotar cannot and should not be judged based on his presidency. While he has been elected to it, it ends there. It appears Donald Ramotar is just a front for the Jagdeoites who handed him the candidacy.
Where Ramotar has to be judged is how he managed the PPP since Cheddi Jagan died. He failed miserably. Not only was the PPP hijacked by the Jagdeoites under his watch, it has become the most dictatorial and Stalinist party in Guyana. Many PPP supporters are shamed by the fact that the PNC is now more democratic than the PPP. Donald Ramotar had a choice to stand up and fight for the working class people who back the PPP or let the rogues take it over and dominate it. We know the choice he made.
From that moment of truth, the barbarians knew they could control Donald Ramotar. From that moment when he refused to fight for the multitude of poor people in this country who back the PPP, the Jagdeoites knew he was their man. Cheddi Jagan would have never as General Secretary capitulated this easily to scoundrels.
Donald Ramotar will continue to capitulate and the PPP supporters will continue to be treated as second class citizens by their own party while the entire country burns in a bonfire of PPP indignity.
M. Maxwell

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