Urling, Ramkarran clueless on inner workings of PPP – Rohee

The People’s Progressive Party has distanced itself from the recent criticisms by former party candidate Clinton Urling who has said that former president Bharrat Jagdeo maintained control of the party and its political direction leading up to the General Elec-tions.

At a press briefing yesterday General Secretary Clement Rohee said that while Urling was in his rights to express his views “…those are his views and the views he expressed in the letter whether it is in respect to the party, the performance of the party, whether it is in respect of any particular individual, it remains his views and not the views of the PPP.”

Rohee said he was disappointed that Urling never raised concerns with him as the general secretary to the party. He also stated that on Wednesday last and two weeks prior following the General Elections the party held meetings with the candidates to discuss what had occurred. He said that at no point did Urling raise any of the issues he expanded on in his letter to Stabroek News on Monday.

“Mr Urling was with us for a brief period of time. He wasn’t with the party for a number of years. He joined the candidates…just on the eve of the time when the party was preparing the List of Candidates,” Rohee noted.

He dismissed questions by the media in relation to there being division within the party as to Jagdeo’s level of influence. “I have been with the PPP for a number of years and at this point in time [I am] one of the longest serving members of the PPP I wouldn’t give much credence to what Mr Urling says so far in his understanding of the nature and the inner workings of the PPP. It is much more complex than he thinks.”

Rohee said Urling did not have the right to “pronounce” on any such matters.

When asked by members of the media his response to former PPP stalwart Ralph Ramkarran, who expressed very similar sentiments since leaving the party and again in a column published in the Sunday Stabroek, Rohee said that his former colleague was being political.

When further pressed the party’s general secretary said Ramkarran had never “worked in the belly of the party,” and could not pronounce on the way in which the party conducts its business.

While he himself acknowledged that the PPP seemingly operated as an old boys’ club, Rohee refused to say that Jagdeo was a major part of that and when questioned got very agitated rejecting attempts by Stabroek News to ask for further explanations.

In a letter published in the Sunday Stabroek, Urling said that it will be a difficult task for the party to change if it continues on the current path with Jagdeo as de facto leader.

Moreover, it would be difficult to attract, and in his case retain, the type of people who can help reinvent the party. Urling, who joined the party’s campaign several weeks before the elections, wrote, “Plainly stated, the party has to move on without Jagdeo if it is to ever recapture its former political prestige.”

Urling, recalling his experience on the party’s campaign trail said that by the time he joined the campaign, it was obvious that Jagdeo was the party’s central figure and one easily got the sense that he was the man leading most, if not all, the party’s political and campaign strategies. “From this observation, I believed this election for the PPP/C was ‘Jagdeo’s’ to win or lose considering the central role he played in the campaign and in formulating its strategies,” he said.

Ramkarran, in his Sunday Stabroek column, said the PPP can now only be saved by external pressure. “There is, and unlikely to be, any internal movement for reform because of the stranglehold on the leadership described above,” he said referring to Jagdeo’s domination of the party.

“It is, therefore, now incumbent on the many members and former members of the PPP who have become disaffected or displaced, who have been forced into inactivity, but who disagree and agonize over the path taken by the PPP and wish to see reforms, to establish a new political party devoted to the ideals of Cheddi Jagan,” he wrote