Ramkarran needs to enter the spacecraft

Mar 02, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have heard many informed citizens, including media colleagues say that should Ralph Ramkarran enter the opposition campaign, he would help because he is one of the long-serving stalwarts of the PPP that the over-50 Indian citizens would know and respect. I think his presence will pose a problem for the PPP.
It is not how many votes he will bring. His presence can only have a positive impact and the APNU-AFC campaign has no reason to refuse anyone who will bring some portion of support. My advice to Mr. Ramkarran is that he should make that historical journey. To be pointedly frank, I cannot see a long political career for Mr. Ramkarran, given his age and the particular contours of Guyanese politics.
You have to be steeped in overwhelming sentiments to think that the future of politics lie with people like Ralph Ramkarran, David Granger and Moses Nagmootoo. It doesn’t matter how much we support them, time moves on, people age with time. In 2020, the date of the next election, all three men will have advanced into their early seventies. By that time younger minds would have emerged in the PNC and the AFC and stake a claim to leadership.
It is the same with the PPP. Roger Luncheon, Gail Teixeira, Clement Rohee, Donald Ramotar, Komal Chand, Harry Persaud Nokta are deep in the twilight of their career. By 2020, young professionals will make serious claim to be leader of the PPP. I know a well known lawyer who said he will not reject the offer to lead the PPP in the future.
It is against this background that Mr. Ramkarran should make his decision. It is up to him to determine how he wants to end his long, long career in politics. I feel an elegant way would be to endorse and participate in that historic coalition whose primary goal is to exorcize the monster of race from the body of the Guyanese nation.
I have long urged both Ramkarran and Henry Jeffery to inform the Guyanese people about the recalcitrant and unforgiving deformations that they encountered in the PPP that have brought the PPP to this ignominious state that it is presently in. An analyst’s competence has to be questioned if he/she cannot see that the adoption of Elizabeth Harper as the Prime Ministerial candidate was a most shameless admission by the PPP that it has become horribly besmirched and that it lacks redeemable figures.
The PPP contenders for that slot were many. The list included Manickchand, Robert Persaud, Frank Anthony, Robeson Benn, Pauline Sukhai, Caroline Birkett, Jennifer Webster, Jennifer Westford, Juan Edghill and Clement Rohee among others. Why was a Public Servant chosen that had a completely apolitical slate and was in fact not known for being in the news or among the people?
The PPP needed such a person because the PPP felt that Harper would not be vulnerable to attack on the platform and people want to vote for clean candidates. It is here where Mr. Ramkarran’s willingness to write about his experience in the PPP becomes so valuable.
His revelation that Roger Luncheon wanted to be the PPP’s presidential candidate in the 1997 general election will be a goldmine for Analysts and Historians. It indicates the nature of the PPP leadership since it was born more than sixty years ago. That leadership was driven by power pursuits and not the fundamental reorganization of post-colonial Guyana.
As I stated above, I have long called on Ramkarran and Jeffrey to elaborate on the destructive forces inside the PPP that have dissolved the moral redemption of the PPP. We should not be glad but be elated that we are seeing historical details from the pen of Mr. Ramkarran.
What interpretation can the analyst put to Luncheon’s bid to be the PPP’s presidential candidate in 1997? It vividly demonstrates that the PPP leadership viewed Indian constituencies in Pavlovian terms. Luncheon didn’t reflect on the race divide that underscores electoral competition. For him, the Indians would not have been voting for a Blackman but the PPP and once the PPP owned Indian people they would voted for the PPP no matter who headed the party.
That thinking has not left the PPP. But time and demographics have caught up with the PPP. The Harper choice has rendered the 1997 interpretation of Roger Luncheon of Guyanese politics obsolete. In 1997 Roger Luncheon could have told his party leaders he wanted to become the PPP’s presidential candidate. And he would have told them that he knew he could win because Indians will always vote for the PPP.
Would Luncheon say the same thing in 2015? The Harper inclusion is the answer.

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