How could the PPP be this way?

May 11, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) as a group, and the main component in the Guyana Government, says it is about law and order. Perhaps, party leaders and elders are sincere in their pronouncements. But then there is Nigel Dharamlall and how high he placed in the party’s just concluded Congress. The PPP insists that it is about clean governance, the best people that Guyana has to offer, and setting an example. But then there is former minister Nigel Dharamlall and how the party holds him in high regard despite his less than stellar record. The PPP, including female members in the group, loves to present a narrative about how much the women of Guyana are respected. But then there is Nigel Dharamlall, a PPP stalwart who has been rewarded with one of the most powerful endorsements that any political body has in its hands to give.

We at this publication are of the view that even the most irresponsible, brain dead, organisation would have put the most distance between itself and him, and not want such a person to be anywhere near its deliberations, its most watched gathering. The top influencers in the PPP could care less of any such things, or what Guyanese think, or how young and mature women of Guyana react. There is the probability that many women will be alarmed by the PPP Central Committee voting, and how well Nigel Dharamlall did for himself. Or, as is more broadly believed, what others who occupy very senior positions in the party did for him. Now that the former accused has so much more power at his command, is well-ensconced in the PPP’s parlour, women may be more than alarmed. Many Guyanese women may have more reason to fear the resurrected and empowered Nigel Dharamlall, especially poor, weak, and vulnerable ones.

What else can they think, how differently should they react, considering that this PPP member, someone of such sullied reputation and believed to represent hidden menace? Especially now that he has been welcomed with the warmest embrace in the party’s tightest circle. Nigel Dharamlall is a relatively young PPP operator. Who knows whether in the short span of another couple of Congresses he could turn out to be the PPP’s number one candidate for national leader? It is a thought that is so frightening as to be paralyzing. This should not be considered far-fetched, or the product of an overactive imagination. The results of the balloting for the PPP Central Committee saw Nigel Dharamlall gaining a higher tally of votes than eight ministers and a former president. That is an achievement that takes on a deeper meaning, when among those left to trail him are several senior ministers, including Guyana’s attorney general. Anil Nandlall, is a senior counsel, and a tireless worker for the party at the highest levels in the local and regional judicial systems. The irony shouldn’t be overlooked by outsiders that Guyana’s leading man of the law is soundly thrashed by a comrade in the Central Committee voting, who had serious law-breaking accusations hanging over his head.

We ask a simple question. Which principled president of a country drawn from that same political party, which honest party leader, would be comfortable with the development of a figure of Nigel Dharamlall’s history being held so close, elevated so high? There have been speculations that the PPP voting was set up to ensure certain preordained outcomes. Whether so or not, that is a matter to be addressed separately. The concern is that wherever Nigel Dharamlall went, he left a trail of poisoned air in his coming and going. This was the situation in parliament, the Guyanese people’s most august house. It was the same story in other places and other houses far from the capital city Georgetown.

What message could the PPP as a national group be sending with all the power in its hands? Is it all that it will defend its own, no matter what is said, or the appearance of the matter? It could be that what the PPP is saying to the Guyanese people is that there is no standard to which it answers, and no one and nothing to control it.

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Government, Guyana, Nigel Dharamlall, organisation, People’s Progressive Party (PPP)

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