Dear Editor,
I am responding to the news item ‘PPP likely to select candidate early in New Year’ (Sunday Stabroek, Dec 12). The ruling PPP needs to abandon the old method of choosing the presidential candidate and replace it with a democratic system. Contrast-ed with the AFC and PNC, the PPP should be embarrassed to want to stick with an old, worn-out, unacceptable system to select its candidate. It should consider a democratic model similar to that of the AFC or PNC.
The AFC chose its candidate via a democratic process by delegates at the party’s convention, although the delegates were merely certifying an agreement made for Khemraj Ramjattan to be the presidential candidate. Nevertheless, the delegates were given the vote to choose between Ramjattan and another person.
The PNC announced that its candidate will be chosen in an open, competitive process in which party groups send delegates to a convention to be held in February and they will vote for someone among the contenders. For both the PNC and AFC, delegates from party groups select the candidates. The PPP should follow a similar open democratic process.
PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar said there is no change in the plan to choose the candidate. Under this process, Mr Ramotar has the advantage and is also being promoted by President Jagdeo, as Mr Moses Nagamootoo, one of the PPP’s presidential contenders, complained that Mr Ramotar is a state-sponsored candidate. As it is now, the party’s ExCo (or politburo as it used to be in the former Soviet Union) of 15 members will make a recommendation to the Central Committee (of 35 members) as their pick and the CC will ratify it. This is by no means a democratic process. The world has changed from the time of this held-over communist practice.
Even the Soviet Union has adopted a new process of delegates and party members choosing the presidential candidate. The party should allow its membership to choose the candidate or the delegates for a special convention which should choose the presidential candidate. Fifteen individuals should not decide who should be president. If these 15 ExCo members re-examine their own conscience, they would come to the inescapable conclusion that it is an unfair, undemocratic process and jettison it so that the party’s supporters can have a voice on who to choose as the candidate.
Yours faithfully,
Rihana Baksh
