Dear Editor,
The thirty-five persons who sit in the PPP’s central committee met on Tuesday (33; two didn’t turn up) to put the direction of the party in the hands of a body called the executive committee, a fifteen person unit. Tuesday was a hot day so the heat may have affected some of them.
If not, then a Shakespear-ian plot played out at Freedom House that day that is reminiscent of the assassination of Julius Caesar. But who played the role of Brutus will remain a mystery since the voting was secret. In the end, unlike the Roman labyrinth in which Mark Anthony emerged as the enlightened voice of the empire, the Guyanese Mark Anthony, Frank Anthony was humiliated. The Guyanese Moses, unlike his Biblical counterpart, failed to part the sea on this occasion
The Guyanese Mark Anthony did not make it to the executive committee. He got twelve votes. The Biblical Moses got seven. Stranger things have happened in politics but this manifestation of Roman realpolitik in Guyana could take its place among political mysteries that have defied the imagination. Dr Frank Anthony, after the congress could have been seen as the de facto leader of the PPP.
One has to take the President and Mrs Jagan out of the equation for obvious reasons. Dr Anthony then by choice of the general membership of the PPP was made the most popular figure in his organization. In what can only be described as eerie and bizarre, the most liked person failed to get into the decision-making machinery of his own organization.
Should any questions be raised about the balloting or did Brutus renege on Julius Caesar as the afternoon sunshine in Georgetown tore into the pores of those thirty-three persons? Whatever the case, the analytical minefield one has to walk to make sense out of the final picture is indeed daunting. How can Frank Anthony who brought third in the congressional voting fail to get into the executive committee, but Reepu Daman Persaud who was third from last in the congressional voting made it? He got 25.
Two huge emblems have taken shape after the meeting on that hot Tuesday afternoon in Freedom House. One is that President Jagdeo has lost out completely in terms of his micromanagement of the official agenda. Mr Jagdeo has been in control of the presidency for nine years, yet he has comprehensively failed to get any of his protégés into the nerve-centre of the PPP. One can say he has chaperoned Robert Persaud in the garden of power since he became President, but Mr Persaud was closer to the key post-1992 players long before Mr Jagdeo was made junior Minister of Finance.
With the exception of Mr Robert Persaud and Mr Jagdeo, the executive committee consists of top PPP cadres from the seventies. With the exception of Messrs Jagdeo, Persaud, Ali Baksh, Ulric Ramanah and Zulfikar Mustapha, the remaining eleven persons have been in the executive committee since the eighties. What is graphically clear after Tuesday is that the PPP in 2008 and after nine years of Jagdeo’s presidency have retained the leaders who controlled the party in the seventies. It means that the PPP inner circle will stay with the people who shaped the party during the long years when it was in opposition.
The meaning of this is that it no longer sees political value in newcomers being at the helm. The significance of the newly installed executive committee is that the PPP wants to enter the 2011 race with a presidential candidate from the eighties. The thirty-three persons that met on Tuesday afternoon have taken the position that President Jagdeo must relate to the leaders who have built and shaped the party. This message is manifestly clear after the executive committee was voted in. What happened on Tuesday is the largest indication to date that the PPP has narrowed its selection of presidential candidates. There will be no consideration for Anthony and Nagamootoo.
The second emblem is that the senior leaders are not interested in the thinking that comes from the general membership. The way they voted for the membership of the executive committee ignored the sentiments of the congress. What we have after Tuesday is a dichotomy between the leadership and the general membership. There is no congress before the 2011 election. This means that the thirty-five members of the central committee will meet to choose the presidential candidate. It will make no sense for the central committee to canvass the general membership because in any case, their preferences did not count on Tuesday.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
