FORMER President and now Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has been known to be a controversial man, and to many, his leadership style has been a loss for the PPP rather than a gain.Former longstanding PPP Executive Ralph Ramkarran writing in his weekly blog ‘Conversation Tree’, said the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) has been historically close to the PPP, but tension developed under Jagdeo.

“The slow but unmistakable deterioration in relations between the PPP and GAWU began to take shape during the latter period of the first Jagdeo administration. The personal leadership techniques of Mr Jagdeo, together with the beginning signs of production and other problems in the industry, which the union was persistent in highlighting both privately and publicly to no avail, and other factors which cannot be recounted here, led to leadership differences between the PPP and GAWU,” Mr Ramkarran said.
He noted that industry woes and growing leadership tension led to increased militancy. The militancy had exasperated the Jagdeo-led government to the point where it threatened to de-recognise the union.
Both the PPP and GAWU were aghast at this threat. According to Ramkarran, the Jagdeo-led Government was seeking to undo what a People’s National Congress (PNC) Government was forced to do after much struggle and suffering from colonial times.

A TERRIBLE REMINDER
He pointed out that it reminded sugar workers of the worst days of colonialism. And with sugar production in dramatic decline and GAWU and sugar workers disaffected, the Alliance For Change (AFC) reaped the political benefits in the 2011 and 2015 elections.
But the former Speaker of the House said a distinction has to be drawn between the political and industrial.
He explained that political differences between the leadership of the PPP and GAWU have never excited the passion that industrial differences led to.
“Boysie Ramkarran, leader of GAWU in the critical 1970s and 1980s, had no political problem with the PPP, but walked away prematurely from both the PPP and GAWU in 1985 after an influential section of the PPP insisted, against his strong opposition, on the prolongation of the Lysons strike in the early 1980s, resulting in the closure of the facility and the loss of the jobs of 900 women.”
Current GAWU President Komal Chand was a strong supporter of Jagdeo’s selection of Donald Ramotar as the PPP’s presidential candidate.

NO FUNDAMENTAL QUARREL
Chand, Ramkarran said, may disagree with Jagdeo’s leadership style and may not have supported him for the position of Leader of the Opposition, but he has no fundamental quarrel with Jagdeo’s political analysis, strategy and objective.

POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
He noted that the three-day strike by GAWU, just as GuySuCo is poised to meet its target for the first time after many years, for a reason that can be generously described as insubstantial – a plea for patience by GuySuCo until it considers the report of the Commission of Inquiry – must lead the government to the conclusion that it was motivated by political considerations.
Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo two Fridays ago called on sugar workers not to go on strike after the union had threatened another three-day strike.
The industry heeded the Prime Minister’s appeal and the union had said that it will seek other constructive measures to get GuySuCo to return to the bargaining table.
Sugar production slumped from 327,000 metric tonnes in the 1960s to an average of below 250,000 tonnes between 2008 and 2014.
Additionally, under the former administration, the sugar industry never came close to realising the promised 500,000 tonnes target. Between 2009 and 2015 GuySuCo not only failed to make a profit, but suffered estimated total losses of $67.8 billion.
GAWU, Ramkarran said, needs to reflect on the fact that its own government sought to curb the militancy and general fortunes of the Guyana Public Service Union which, some would say, suffered dramatic declines when it terminated the agency shop agreement.
GAWU has such an agreement with GuySuCo.