A NEW and United Guyana (ANUG) has announced that, at a Members’ Meeting held on Saturday at the Georgetown Club, Camp Street, Georgetown, Ralph Hari Narayen Ramkarran was elected as its Presidential Candidate for the upcoming General and Regional Elections due to be held on March 2, 2020. Ramkarran was twice overlooked by the PPP/C.
Mr. Ramkarran is a founding member of ANUG and is its General Secretary, the fledgling party said in a release. According to ANUG, he has played a major role, along with the Chairman, Mr. Timothy Jonas and many others, in recognising the need for a New Political Party with a unique and singular vision. “ANUG is dedicated to bringing to an end the competition for ethno-political dominance in Guyana’s politics by creating: (a) a Governance System which provides for the equal participation at the executive level of Guyana’s main political forces; (b) an Electoral System that provides for elected constituency representatives while maintaining proportionality, and; (c) a representative legislature independent of the executive.”
While ANUG’s policies have been substantially determined and will be announced as the election campaign season develops, the party said “we are still in the process of refining some policies and devising additional ones to meet the needs of Guyana as our income grows from the exploitation of our petroleum resources.”
However, ANUG believes that the most fundamental issue facing the Guyanese people, over and above every other issue, is that of our System of Government. “We further believe that unless that system changes in such a way that the harmful consequences of ethnic competition between our main political parties is substantially reduced, the political instability which has consumed us for much of the past yearand much of our modern political history, will continue to be the dominant features of our lives. This will occur while solutions to crime and corruption and the rewards of a growing economy over the coming years will continue to elude the Guyanese people.”
Ramkarran, an Attorney-at-Law and Senior Counsel had devoted his entire adult life to the political development of Guyana through the Peoples’ Progressive Party. Mr. Ramkarran, at 73, was a member of the PPP’s Central Committee and Executive Committee in 1974 and 1975 respectively. Among the main positions in which he served are as a member of the Elections Commission for the 1973, 1992, 1997 and 2001 elections, as a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2001, as Chair of the Constitutional Reform Commission in 1999-2000 and as Speaker of the National Assembly from 2001 to 2012. He resigned from the PPP in June 2012 when it was made impossible for him to continue his membership after he wrote an article in the PPP’s newspaper, Mirror, calling for steps to be taken to reduce the “Pervasive Corruption” in Guyana.
