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Donald Ramotar has no integrity

Jul 24, 2013 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
I penned this letter in response to Hannah Mohamed’s “Donald Ramotar’s integrity is unquestionable” (KN,  June 5, 2013) and I forgot about it. But now, Ralph Ramkarran has resurrected it. In his expose of the nastiness within the PPP titled “The PPP has grown tired” (KN, July 23, 2013), Ramkarran said something which jolted me out of my chair.
I have always maintained that Donald Ramotar lacks integrity. Ramotar’s modesty and affability are not integrity. Integrity is about morality, ethicality and honesty. It is rooted in the unflagging pursuit of right over wrongdoing.
Donald Ramotar’s integrity must be viewed against his conduct when he held power as the PPP General Secretary and now as President. It must be assessed against how he used power. Integrity in leadership enlarges integrity beyond self to integrity to as it affects party, nation, people and country.
There are fundamental values in integrity that cannot be bargained or subdued. A leader’s actions have telling repercussions for the hundreds of thousands who are governed by him and his entity. A leader has the power to set a moral and rule of law course for his party and nation.
A leader’s refusal to discipline a party member when faced with uncompromising evidence of wrongdoing signals that leader is accepting of wrongdoing and also encourages others to pursue wanton corruption knowing the leader will defend it or blithely ignore it.
When that party leader heads a party that holds power over an entire country, the dire consequences of a lack of integrity are abysmally clear. If Ralph Ramkarran is to be believed, then Ramotar’s act was immodest, immoral, depraved, corrupt and dictatorial in that it opposed the findings of a committee of party members including a former president and founder of the PPP.
There is no integrity in that conduct. This very notion that a leader who is a nice guy is naturally a good leader is bogus, deficient and laughable. Guyana would have been better off with a gruff leader who has intractable morals, valiantly fought corruption and attacked wrongdoing than some nice guy who defended atrocity produced to him by his own party members.
A refusal of a personal gift on one occasion or not stealing from one’s employer are wonderful traits but they are undermined by that individual’s governance of a menagerie of trickery, corruption and thieving without lifting a finger to reprimand the Ali Babas surrounding him.
How can anyone rationally argue that Ramotar has integrity when the PPP which he took over in 1997 as General Secretary has descended into its worst period of corruption, wrongdoing, chicanery and heinousness under his stewardship?
This is the same Ramotar-led PPP that Ralph Ramkarran said has not produced audited financial records and reports to its membership for decades now. Monies were stolen from NCN, taken and placed directly into a personal bank account. Yet, Ramotar did nothing. Everywhere we turn in the past 18 months since he became President by a fait accompli with a show of hands window dressing vote, Donald Ramotar has been just as anemic as his predecessor, Bharrat Jagdeo, towards corruption, venality and wrongdoing in the PPP and the country at large.
Criminality has surged under his rule. The harsh facts and evidence of Ramotar’s rule as General Secretary of the PPP and now as President indicate he lacks integrity.
Where was/is Ramotar’s integrity when the working class party he lorded over was/is hijacked by a corrupt rogue cabal and tuned into a brothel of debauchery and corruption? He was voted for by that same cabal to become President.
Where was/is Ramotar’s integrity on the Marriott, airport expansion, Amaila Falls, Berbice Bridge tolls, Clico, Guysuco and other fiascoes? Leaders with integrity fight back against corruption. They discipline party organizers committing transgressions. They do not insulate vagabonds to protect the party when that shady course will eventually destroy the entire party and the nation it governs.
Desmond Hoyte’s integrity showed after he got the absolute powers of the presidency. In light of Ramkarran’s statement that Ramotar refused to discipline a corrupt party organizer, I now believe that Ramotar was not a puppet of the Jagdeoites controlling the PPP’s Central Committee but one of the puppetmasters. What this means is that there is no hope of Ramotar changing.
Ramotar is really Jagdeo all over again. Thieves, crooks, the criminal-minded, corrupters and the corrupt and vagabonds will continue to thrive in the dear land of Guyana.
M. Maxwell

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