WAS RAMOTAR SABOTAGED?

Feb 17, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The PPPC lost the 2015 general elections by a whisker, less than five thousand votes. No elections in Guyana have been closer.
One can only speculate what would have happened had the PPP won the elections by that margin. One can only ask why APNU+AFC asked their supporters to camp outside of the polling stations.
Donald Ramotar’s political career ended with the 2015 elections. If he does not know that by now, then those persons close to him should tell him. He is not the Leader of the Opposition and is not in the National Assembly. He is not likely to be his party’s presidential candidate. For all intents and purposes, he is not likely to feature again on his party’s slate.
Donald Ramotar should use the time now available to him to determine why he lost the elections. He should ask himself whether he was sabotaged from within, and if so, whether there was a deliberate conspiracy to ensure that he did not return, so that someone else could become his party’s presidential candidate for 2020.
He has to ask himself whether in certain areas his party underperformed at the elections, and whether there were elements who wanted it that way so that he could be retired politically and someone else take his place.
A legal decision was made just before the elections by Chief Justice Ian Chang which allows for a sitting President to serve a third term. This decision has not been overturned, at least not as yet, by a higher court. If it was not overturned then it would have qualified Donald Ramotar to run for a third term had he won the 2015 elections. It would have been inconceivable to ask a sitting President in 2020, however narrow his margin of victory in 2015, to not stand for re-election once he was eligible for re-election.
This fact has fueled speculation within certain circles that Donald Ramotar was the victim of an internal plot to ensure that he did not win the elections. It is a theory worth considering, because of the fact that the PPP did not increase its share of the votes in certain areas where it was expected to do so and which was being commanded by persons not known to be loyalists of Ramotar, while in certain other areas, including in seven Regions, the PPP won and only lost one other Region by one vote.
The one factor that goes against this theory is the overall results of the elections which mirrored that of 2011. Overall the elections gave the APNU+AFC the slimmest of victories, just as it had handed the combined opposition in 2011 the slimmest of majorities.
This is the one factor that suggests that the conspiracy theory that Donald Ramotar was undermined from within his party may not be tenable. But his treatment after the elections still raises the question as to whether the PPP determined that he was unelectable again or whether he was part of a grand plot to elevate someone else.
Donald Ramotar should look at the numbers and make a determination. Large numbers of persons did not vote in Berbice. The voter turnout at some stations was below the national average. These persons may not be around – the US visa policy may have been a contributory factor – but it is for Ramotar and his team to ascertain this fact and to determine whether those persons were discouraged from coming out to vote.
Donald Ramotar has a lot of time on his hands to make that determination. The public would sure be interested in knowing the answers to that investigation.

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WAS RAMOTAR SABOTAGED?

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