The PPP must be the world’s most undemocratic party

Dec 08, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Bharrat Jagdeo stated that before 2018 ends, the Central Committee (CC) of the PPP will choose the presidential candidate for the 2020 poll. He affirmed in his belief that the central committee is the right forum. He stated this has been the pattern and he will continue with it.
It has to be the worst party in the entire world that in its sixty five year of existence would choose a person that could be the president of the country and such a person’s election comes from a group of 35 persons.
In this part of the world, party leaders come to the top from a congressional election or from the ballots of its membership.
Every PPP member must demand from his party’s leadership the answer to the question– what is essentially flawed about delegates choosing their party candidate for the 2020 contest. Why does Jagdeo have no faith in his party delegates or the entire membership?
In the recently concluded local government poll, Jagdeo openly embraced local candidates who live in their neighbourhood to govern effectively. If the PPP could allow each NDC to field its own people to rule Guyana (make no mistake, NDCs and municipalities do have crucial authority within the overall administration of Guyana) why can’t such people be allowed to end delegates to a social congress for the purpose of electing the 2020 candidate?
It is literally an anachronism in today’s world where small groups with a political party vote for their leaders. It is a thing of the past. The PNC broke from that tradition a long time ago. David Granger won from Carl Greendige by twelve votes at a congressional process. It was a phenomenal resurgence by Greenidge because he was out of the country for twenty years while Granger was a household name during that time.
In 2017, at a delegates’ conference hundreds of AFC members voted for a new leader. The incumbent, Khemraj Ramjattan, lost by one vote to Raphael Trotman. This is the way of politics in today’s world. It is inconceivable that in a party with thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of members, a small cabal would make the choice.
I believe Jagdeo wants the CC to vote because he has enough authority to manipulate the system. What is hard to comprehend is how those within the PPP can remain silent when they think of what Guyana has to offer after 2020. And their party can lose out because of the will of one man. Every human in the world that read up on Guyana’s oil future has agreed that the economy will improve.
The party in power in 2020 will not lose in 2025. There will be sufficient funds available to develop Guyana to the extent that the population may feel that the ruling party should be reelected. In 2018, in allowing the CC of just 35 persons to decide who is to be the presidential candidate, the PPP may be making its final destructive act.
Out of power after, 2020, the PPP may not regain office long into the future.
There are two nightmares facing the PPP at the moment. Against the backdrop of their stunning performance in the 2018 PPP leaders feel they could win in 2020. Here are the two ghosts stalking them. Jagdeo will claim that his leadership created the LGE phenomenon. Based on such exaltations, Jagdeo will want to have a substantial input into the presidential candidate debate.
In direct contradiction to this is the thinking in some quarters in the PPP that the APNU+AFC government is badly tattered and the PPP in enjoying renewed credibility. That credibility should be taken to its logical climax by the selection of names that are presentable and have no baggage which the PPP campaign may be vulnerable to.
Simply put; those claimants are saying it is time for new PPP leadership because it is that type of leadership that will win in 2020.
If Jagdeo is allowed the latitude he wants then the CC will make the decision and the outcome will certainly be someone Mr. Jagdeo feels will be dependent on him. Those who want new faces in the PPP leadership have only one way of getting that; it is to allow the members or a special congress to make the decision.
There are rising arguments within the PPP for the presidential candidate to be chosen democratically. The PPP has never operated in their congressional elections with democratic instincts.
That party is now facing its worse unnerving moment in a long time – will it control oil money or stupidly throw away an opportunity to do so?

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The PPP must be the world’s most undemocratic party

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