Donald Ramotar has been Presidential Advisor since 1992
–    Best-suited Presidential Candidate
DONALD Ramotar has stood unwaveringly by the side of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and deep within the ranks of the People’s Progressive Party, since he was a little boy – even campaigning for the Party in the hinterland regions while he was still in school, simultaneously selling the Party’s information-dissemination organ, “The Mirror”.

He subsequently rose to become one of Dr. Jagan’s most trusted and loyal disciples and imbibed all the values and commitment to national unity and nation-building inhered in the Father of the Guyanese Nation, who has been dubbed by world leaders as the Mahatma of the western hemisphere.

A democratic norm dictates the greater good prevails

Likewise, so did all the recent PPP presidential nominees.  However, within the quintessential culture of the PPP is a democratic norm, which dictates that the unity of the party and the greater good prevail:  And in this instance the greater good is the welfare of the nation; so true to the spirit of unity that is one essential ingredient that makes the PPP the towering force that it is in modern-day politics, and which has sustained that Party through its greatest trials – even in the political wilderness that it had been relegated to by the PNC administration, the collective executive unanimously decided that, all things being considered, the General-Secretary of the Party should be the Party’s next presidential candidate.

Even Ramotar concedes that there would have been no question of a new presidential candidate if the incumbent President Bharrat Jagdeo had still been eligible for that position once more, but he had himself reconfigured the legislation of the land to constrain a two elected term presidency.

When the PPP took office in 1992 there had been no blueprint for the newly-installed government to build on.  The PNC, after finally recognizing that they could not forestall free-and-fair elections in 1992, after decades of rigging the elections in their favour, with the sanction and help of imperialist forces, went on a spree of vandalism, theft and destruction.  The records are there for the world to peruse.

PPP/C inherited chaos everywhere, Greenidge declared nation was bankrupted

Documents were consumed in huge bonfires.  Government offices were denuded of everything, even the most basic items, including typewriters, furniture – everything.  The PPP/C inherited empty and destroyed governmental offices, with chaos everywhere, and a bankrupted nation of which the devastation countrywide would take volumes to chronicle.  PNC’s recent presidential nominee and then Finance Minister, Carl Greenidge, had declared the country bankrupt with no recourse to salvaging the nation’s financial status during his last budget presentation.

The newly-constructed PPP/C Cabinet could not have functioned effectively without the well-oiled machinery of the PPP construct, working simultaneously in conjunctive efforts to salvage and reconstruct Guyana in efforts to halt its plunging spiral, ranked as lowest on socio-economic indices on international developmental rating graphs.

And as per democratic norms and leadership practices within that Party, the decisions taken are unanimous; so it was not merely a few men and women, competent and committed as that first PPP/C cabinet was, that drove and executed the massive restructuring of the national development paradigm, which sent it unerringly on an upward trajectory, but the entire PPP structure, without which the success of the governance of the nation would not have been possible – and Donald Ramotar was, and remains, integral to that process of nation re-construction and growth.  Moreover, he has helmed the Party since the demise of its iconic founder-leader, Dr Jagan, with full support and cooperation with Party co-founder and matriarch, Mrs. Janet Jagan and the entire PPP construct.

Notably, he rejected a ministerial position to captain the Party through all the trying times that the fledgling government and its embryonic Party were subjected to by PNC’s destructive stratagems over the years to wrest power in the land once more, not through the polls, but through its calls for insurgency and “slo’ fiah, mo fiah” in the land, which succeeded in robbing the PPP of two years of its legitimate presidential term in the 1990s in a bid to halt the PNC-driven rioting and destruction in the country.

PPP well on the way to achieving Dr. Jagan’s dream of peace, progress and prosperity in Guyana

Despite this, the PPP Government and its parent Party has prevailed and Guyana is well on the way to achieving the peace, progress and prosperity that Dr. Cheddi dreamed of for this land and its people, and for which the PPP has unrelentingly striven; and Donald Ramotar has been integral to that process since the PPP/C assumed the presidential office in 1992; hence he has always served in an unofficial capacity as a presidential advisor.  Moreso, he has always served as an aider and abettor of governmental projects and programmes; because the PPP has never been and will never be indivisible from the PPP government, and the PPP government has only succeeded so well because of its all-inclusive nature, which has incorporated the inherited governmental human construct in public offices in its developmental initiatives and programmes.

This Party, so truly national in scope and its operational methodologies, has propelled a supremely successful government for nearly two decades; and captaining that Party for the greater part of that duration had been the PPP’s presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar.  And even before accession to the executive office of the land the PPP has always been entitled to the presidency, because it has never yet lost a free-and-fair general election in this land; and Ramotar’s input and advice was integral to each successive PPP Manifesto, which has driven presidential and governmental decisions and policies.

The opposition’s convenient and opportunistic contention that the PPP/C is an Indian Government cannot bear scrutiny, because any observant and impartial person can analyse the composition of the governmental construct – from Cabinet to departmental heads and public offices and critically adjudge and form an unbiased opinion to the contrary.

Also, Donald Ramotar’s antecedents comprise the racial composition of the three main racial strains in Guyana, so he truly is a complete Guyanese product.  On that narrow and prejudicial argument with which the opposition loves to beat up on the PPP, the next PPP Government would not be led by an Indian, but by a “Buffiander”, or whatever is the name given to the unique racial composition that formulates the person that Donald Ramotar is.

His ability to lead has been proven by the piloting of the PPP’s boat and keeping it afloat in extremely turbulent waters.  His popularity transcends borders and divides, even within opposition camps, and he is possibly the most-liked PPP member.  One can remember Donald Ramotar and the late Winston Murray engaged and engrossed in very cordial, even friendly discussions on the corridors of Parliament Building and other places, and his equable temperament and equanimity with which he takes criticisms; and his mischievously puckish smile as he rebuts without rancour has endeared him even to his traditional opponents.

Many in opposition camp like and respect Ramotar

Politics aside, there are many in the opposition camp who like and respect Donald Ramotar tremendously.  It is the considered opinion of many persons, from keen observances of the duo, that a Ramotar-led Government would have included a Winston Murray, and vice versa, because the rapport between the two greatly-respected leaders was such that transcended politics.

Donald Ramotar is therefore the logical person for the PPP to choose to lead the next government; and it is also logical, following the same line of argument, and to sustain continuity of governance and the PPP/C’s developmental trajectory, that Donald Ramotar would seek to utilize the services of Bharrat Jagdeo, who has out-performed his portfolio and whose superlative performance as president of Guyana necessitates his continued service to this nation if he is to remain true to the trust that the patriarchal and matriarchal Jagans reposed in him.

No PNC in Guyana’s general elections for first time in decades

On the distaff side of the coin is David Granger, who has presided over the dissolution of the PNC as his primary electioneering strategy.  Burnham must be turning over in his grave.

Granger’s record in this country, unlike that of Ramotar, cannot bear scrutiny.
The Burnham USA/UK team let loose the “dogs of war” on Guyana when the two countries decided that, of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham the latter was the “lesser of two evils”, thus precipitating the most destructive era in the history of Guyana, barring none, when the Guyanese nation almost self-destructed because of machinations of two unscrupulous and merciless global superpowers and a decadent and power-drunk local despot.
Today those wounds in the soul of the nation are being healed – slowly but surely, although the “dogs of war” are ramping up the crime wave.  However, only those who own the dog can call off the dog, and there are many promises of “addressing the security problem” in Guyana.
The aging but ambitious Granger is now trying to portray himself as a career soldier who was patriotic to his country; but which patriot wages war against his own people?  As one letter writer said, he “…will now have to explain his role as Forbes Burnham’s Political Liaison Officer at the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), and in the 1973 seizure of ballot boxes by the GDF that gave the PNC a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Even the PPP has never been able to amass a two-thirds majority in any election with their superior numbers, but the PNC did it in 1973, with a little help from their loyal friends in the GDF.   It is not good enough to sweep this issue under the rug by explaining how loyal a soldier Granger was… only following orders. Professional ethics and his conscience should have forced him to resign from the GDF rather than be part of a machinery that disenfranchised so many Guyanese, and stole the elections from the PPP.

Granger historically linked with violence in Guyana

“By placing his career above the interest of the Guyanese people; by remaining loyal to Burnham and the PNC; and by his continued silence over the years on the GDF-executed election fraud in 1973, David Granger has forfeited his right to question the decisions relative to the emerging PPP/C Presidential Candidate, or to take issue on any other matter of national interest.”
Granger was also security advisor to Desmond Hoyte during the worst election rigging in the history of Guyana, superseding any of Burnham’s efforts, and he strategized many of the policies that kept this nation captive and subjective to PNC bullyism and dictatorship, with the result of every Guyanese family suffering unimaginably, except for a special few elites who were provided luxurious lifestyles, much state property, and who accessed every type of foodstuff that the people of the land had to line up in long queues for, especially as a result of Hoyte’s much touted Economic Recovery Programme, which was dubbed as “Empty Rice Pot”, and which froze the wages of Public Servants at $2,000.      That was, until Dr. Cheddi Jagan, upon his accession to office, told the IMF to put their Draconian conditionalities where the sun does not shine and re-opened wages and conditions negotiations for the labour force, because the PPP has always been a working class party and Dr. Jagan, who had always championed the causes of the downtrodden, refused to bow to the might of the IMF juggernaut.

Do current “dogs of war” belong to Granger?

Granger’s platform is security; so will this aging presidential candidate call off the “dogs of war”; or does it serve his best interest to increase the pressure on the ruling party, as per the past strategies of the PNC, which ramped up the crime wave through the X-13 Plan and the “Slo fiah, and mo’ fiah”, while calling on their “kith and kin” in the joint services, whom from fear of the machinations of aging and ambitious glory-hunters.
The army put him out to pasture, but he has already eaten up all the grass, now he wants to devour the nation, which the PNC considers its personal property, as do their electorate.
His record is there for all to see, for those who want to see, and for those who want a country that is free from fear of despots.
However, a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf, and Guyanese have matured enough as a people to choose not to once again be devoured by the beast of Guyana’s apocalypse.
The PPP will win the upcoming elections hands-down, free-and-fair and free-from-fear, as Donald Ramotar leads that Party to victory later this year.
His status as perennial presidential advisor – formal or informal, will evolve, as a natural progression, to that of the nation’s President.