-new faces enter party’s leadership, constitution brought in line with current practices
FOLLOWING the conclusion of the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) 32nd Congress on Sunday, President Dr Irfaan Ali emerged at the top of the list of candidates voted into the party’s central committee.
This was revealed at the party’s post-congress press conference which was held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
During this conference, the General Secretary of the party, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo revealed that 35 persons were elected to the central committee with President Ali leading the list with 2,308 votes followed by himself with 2,257 votes.
The other persons elected to the committee are: Zulfikar Mustapha, Vickram Bharrat, Gail Teixeira, Nigel Dharmlall, Collin Croal, Kwame McCoy, Anil Nandlall, Pauline Sukhai, Shyam Nokta, Ricky Ramraj, Jennifer Westford, Neil Kumar, Anand Persaud, Frank Anthony, Sarah Browne, Zamal Hussain, Faizal Jaffarally, Bryan Allicock, Vindhya Persaud, Charles Ramson, Karl Singh, Pau; Cheong, Claire Singh, Donald Ramotar, Humace Oodit, Brentnol Ashley, Dharamkumar Seeraj, Bheri Ramsaran, Sheik Ayube, Vickash Ramkissoon, Sase Gunraj, Clement Rohee and Indranie Chandarpal.
In addition to these voting members, Dr Jagdeo noted that five persons known as candidate members were elected to sit on the committee. They will have no voting power.
Some of these candidate members are new faces in the party’s leadership. The five elected candidate members are, Deodat Indar, Mae Thomas, Jason Abdulla, Andrew Forsythe and Rion Peters.
Against this backdrop, the General Secretary stated that this committee will get together and elect an executive committee made up of 15 members and will also elect the general secretary of the party and other officers like the executive secretary, international secretary and finance secretary.
“So, when that meeting is held later this week then the general secretary and all of the others will be elected,” Jagdeo said.
FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES
Meanwhile, coming out of the landmark congress for the party, Dr Jagdeo told members of the media that some fundamental changes were made to the party’s structure.
“I must say today that we had the near-unanimous support when the question was put to amend the resolution to remove Marxism, Leninism from our constitution and to remove socialism from our constitution,” he said.
That proposal, he said, was part of a list of amendments to the constitution that got unanimous support and was a unanimous decision of the party’s congress.
Noting that this was supported, he explained that that this “does not mean that we give up on our history or our working-class ideology.”
Against this backdrop, he noted that teaching all members the principles of Marxism and Leninism have been replaced with teaching the party’s founding principles, political philosophy, core values, history, struggles and achievements.
Jagdeo remarked, “These are fundamental changes to the party, we had long moved away in practice from those Marxism, Leninism and socialism of a different era.”
He went on to add that embracing ideological plurality, racial unity, religious harmony and plurality have all been part of the party but are now part of its constitution.
Further to this, he disclosed that during the congress there was a resolution to elect a group to review the party’s constitution which was adopted in 1979 and amended some 20 years ago and have it updated.
