Sinking ship leaves rats

Jun 23, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Khemraj Ramjattan– a former chairman of the Progressive Youth Organisation and Member of the Central Committee–was among the first to desert the People’s Progressive Party’s sinking ship. Then came the veteran Boyo Ramsaroop. Next was Moses Nagamootoo. Then came Hari Narayen ‘Ralph’ Ramkarran. Other veterans–Harry Ramdass, Cecil Ramsingh, Fazal Khan and Joseph O’Lall– disembarked quietly.
Thousands of ordinary supporters, sensing that the ship was sinking, also began deserting the People’s Progressive Party in droves. More than 27,000 persons who voted for the PPP in the 2001 general and regional elections did not do so in 2006. More than 17,000 who voted for the PPP in 2006 jumped ship to vote for A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance for Change in 2011. The PPP lost over 45,000 votes during Bharrat Jagdeo’s wild 1999-2011 presidency. The sinking trend is clear to the party’s membership if not to its leadership.
The People’s Progressive Party over the last sixty-three years indoctrinated its members with the mythology of Jaganite cultism, Marxism-Leninism, democratic centralism and the saga of its imagined solitary struggle against colonialism and capitalism. These articles of faith rallied generations of believers and created a mystique which helped it to remain a formidable force in local politics.  But change has come. Ancient myths, unknown to the present generation, can no longer distort the actuality of two decades of decadence.
The PPP’s 27th Congress in July 2002 at the J. C. Chandisingh Secondary School at Port Mourant in the East Berbice-Corentyne Region, was an early indication of an impending mutiny on board. Khemraj Ramjattan launched a rebellious resolution that threatened to shake the party’s four sacred tenets all at once.
The ‘Ramjattan Resolution’ called for the removal of references to Marxism-Leninism from the Constitution and ‘direct elections’ for the top executives. He proposed also that the party congress closest to a general election should provide a forum at which persons willing to become candidates for the presidency would be selected ‘democratically’ by all the delegates. Ramjattan’s Resolution was anathema to the party’s ruling cabal and was rejected. For other reasons, he too was eventually expelled.
The PPP’s 28th Congress was held in August 2005 at the Cotton Field Secondary School, in the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region under the theme, “Strengthen National Unity, Expand Democracy and Social Progress.” The congress allowed the cabal to consolidate its grip on the Central Committee, restrict democracy and retard progress. The result was that, in general elections the next year, 2006, the PPP lost a greater number of votes.
The PPP’s 29th Congress was held in August 2008 at the Diamond Secondary School in the Demerara-Mahaica Region. The knives were out by this time. All eyes were set on the prize of the party’s presidential candidacy in the general elections constitutionally due to be held in 2011. The congress became an arena for a shadow war between two factions –led by Ramotar, and Jagdeo, respectively. Reepu Daman Persaud struck the first blow by raising the bogus issue of a ‘third term’ for Jagdeo who was then still president. Ramotar had to sidestep the challenge.
The Jagdeo faction then surreptitiously started their campaign for him to be allowed to run for another presidential term, even though it was prohibited by the Constitution. The Jagdeo group calling itself the ‘Guyanese Coalition for Jagdeo Third Term’ launched a glitzy publicity campaign involving the erection of a billboard, the distribution of posters, flyers and buttons and the publication of dubious opinion polls suggesting that Jagdeo would be re-elected.
The Ramotar faction responded. A shadowy group of supporters” giving their names as “Ganga Kawal, Basdeo Singh and 11 other PPP Diehards” “ suddenly emerged. The group published a full-page “Open Appeal to Leaders and Members of the PPP” in a daily newspaper in January 2010. The “Appeal’ alleged, among other things, “…that the PPP hard core is being marginalized in the government and a new band, termed by one commentator as  “the new private sector,” is becoming dominant and all-powerful.” Ramotar was eventually able to win the nomination as the PPP’s presidential candidate.
The PPP’s 30th Congress is now scheduled to be held on 2nd-4th August at the J.C. Chandisingh Secondary School at Port Mourant. The problem is that factionalism is tearing the Party apart. Rifts have reopened; rivalries have been rekindled. The central and executive committees control the party organisation between congresses. Whoever controls those committees will control the state apparatus and the country. The state and its resources have come to be seen as a plaything in the hands of the PPP Central Committee and this is what makes the forthcoming congress so vital to the survival of the cabal.
The public should not expect change from the PPP’s 30th Congress. As the ship continues to sink, it will leave on board many of the same central Committee members who have dominated the Party and the State for the last two decades.

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