Ramkarran must now pursue a nationalist dream

Mar 29, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When Mr. Jagdeo’s autocratic power in the PPP led to the selection of Donald Ramotar as the PPP’s presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections, my reaction was to call on Ramkarran to spend the rest of his life on a journey to democratize the PPP. It didn’t turn out that way. Mr. Ramkarran subsequently left the PPP. For the political observer, it was the final act of self-destruction of the PPP.
Last Sunday, Mr. Ramkarran published an essay that could be interpreted as the final rites. It was a poignant description of the death of the party that Dr. Cheddi Jagan and others founded more than five decades ago.
What Ramkarran wrote about the post-Jagan party last Sunday is what most analysts knew about the post-1999 PPP, even though Mrs. Jagan was still alive. For all intents and purposes the PPP as Guyana and the world knew it under Cheddi Jagan is dead. Beneficiaries of the Jagdeoite PPP will continue to write and speak as if that kind of PPP is still alive. Decent Guyanese know it is not. For this columnist, who is also a political activist, I have long concluded that the rule of the PPP has exceeded the Burnham era in immorality, morbidity and nationalist betrayal.
Even if Mr. Ramkarran does not accept that the PPP’s governance is more terrible than Burnham’s, he is still left with the question as to what happens with the rest of his political life. Mr. Ramkarran cannot be that self-deceiving to think he still has a career with the PPP. It is over and for three reasons. One is that given the type of semi-fascist frame of mind the PPP has been in since Mr. Jagdeo took over, reconciliation will not be pursued by the present PPP cabal.
Secondly, the ambitious young monsters in the PPP will go to extreme lengths to preserve their dream that once there are general elections, the PPP candidate will become the President. We humans cannot predict the future and the future is inevitably pregnant with amazing surprises, but one surprise that will not happen is a Ramkarran presidential candidacy for the PPP in the next election. The PPP days of Moses Nagamootoo and Ralph Ramkarran are over. Moses accepted it, Ralph should.
Thirdly, let us say that the unbelievable possibility opens up and Ramkarran is accepted back into the PPP. At the next election he would be 69 years of age. It is unthinkable that either the PNC or AFC would front him as their candidate. Even if he is a presidential candidate in 2016, at that age it is doubtful that Guyana will find that a pleasing prospect. All of this means that the political epoch of Ralph Ramkarran is nearing its end.
The analyst has to ask – what then for Ramkarran? He can do one of two things. He can write as he is currently doing and then one day he will fade as age and energy leave. Or at his age now, before energy goes, he can attempt to save his country that he no doubt gave a greater part of his life to.
Mr. Ramkarran is sixty-six years old, is semi-wealthy, lives in a upper middle class home of his own, has a lucrative law practice that his two sons will inherit. What more in life at his age does Mr. Ramkarran want? It would be his patriotic duty to dedicate his life to the future of Guyana. This will require an active political role. One requirement of that role is to pursue constitutional change so this country would never ever see a Burnham or a Jagdeo again, never see again one-party domination, as we saw under the PNC and now the PPP, never ever again see the ghost of political and ethnic domination roaming and devouring this land.
Mr. Ramkarran cannot be that naïve to think his advocacy of democratization in the PPP can save the PPP. Although he is a lawyer and not a sociologist, Mr. Ramkarran is sufficiently well read to know that the PPP has crossed all the lines that separate logical thinking and irrational behaviour.
The PPP is in dictatorship mode. Dictatorship has Freudian compulsions where motive and action become disjoined. Dictatorship cannot be saved. Dictatorship refuses to save itself. All the close associates, all the intimates, all the comrades that Mr. Ramkarran grew up with in the PPP that have remained in the PPP have crossed those lines. Mr. Ramkarran points to one exception, Mr. Navin Chandarpal. But he is part of the PPP leadership in name only. History waits for Ralph Ramkarran.

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Ramkarran must now pursue a nationalist dream

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