A new PPP should look to woo members who have left - Ramkarran

A new PPP should look to woo members who have left – Ramkarran

Jul 26, 2013 News

Former Central Executive member of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Ralph Ramkarran, in his statement earlier this week, opined that the ruling party should take steps to return to the days when it was respected. Several members or “comrades” of the party would have left. It is now time to woo them back, he said.

Ralph Ramkarran

“It (the PPP) should consider steps which will bring back those comrades, retrieve its stature of the past and the respect and esteem in which it has once been held by people everywhere. Unless it does so, it will soon be out of office, still spitting and sputtering abuse against the messengers and everyone else, except itself.”
In June last year, Ramkarran, a two-time Speaker of the National Assembly, resigned from the PPP, weeks after he wrote a critical piece on corruption in the party’s newspaper. It was a big blow to a party which had only a few months before lost its Parliamentary majority following the 2011 elections, the first time in its 20-year reign.
Ramkarran has since been penning a number of pieces on his website and which have also been appearing in a private daily newspaper.
Over the weekend, the PPP took on Ramkarran wondering why he kept quiet about corruption in the party while he was there. The party, in a statement, also made it clear that Ramkarran never raised the corruption issue while making his bid to become the Presidential Candidate for the party in the run-up to the November 2011 elections.
Responding to those criticisms, Ramkarran said that the party leadership is destroying the PPP and tarnishing its “great image and ideals” which thousands of dedicated comrades have given much to sustain.
“It has driven and is driving many comrades away in circumstances which are deeply painful, which I will fully reveal in my article next week. Instead of sharing responsibility for governance with the Opposition, it is handing the country over in its entirety to the Opposition on a platter.”
In damning allegations this week, Ramkarran whose father Boysie Ramkarran was a founder of the party, claimed that the PPP never placed anti-corruption on top of its agenda despite the growing criticisms.
As a matter of fact, he said, under the rule of former President Bharrat Jagdeo, there was intolerance to any criticisms raised by party members.
The former Speaker was convinced that the “post-Cheddi Jagan PPP does not now have, nor has ever had, any intention of dealing with corruption, either in its ranks or anywhere else.”
Ramkarran denied he kept quiet on corruption, saying it was raised in the party’s newspaper, The Mirror, and even in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle. He had also spoken of waging a war on corruption should he become President of Guyana.
Several large projects, including the Amaila Falls hydro and the Cheddi Jagan International Airport expansion, have been under scrutiny, with accusations of collusion between government officials and contractors.
Despite calls, there have been delays in establishing the Public Procurement Commission, an independent body that is to regulate the issuance and monitoring of contracts.
Ramkarran also urged the PPP not to kill the messenger but deal with the issues.
Two prominent members of the party, Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo, also left the party in recent years. Both are part of the Alliance For Change and sit in the Opposition in the National Assembly.
Next weekend, the PPP is set to hold its first congress in five years, in which founders Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his wife, Janet Jagan will be absent for the first time since the party was established.