Dear Editor,
After reading Christopher Ram’s letter establishing that Dr. Singh’s appointment was illegal, I am compelled to openly ask the elephant-in-the-room question; is this a dress rehearsal for something sinister the PPP may be considering trying down the pipeline? Was this a ploy to test some very murky but important waters for the PPP and the current Jagdeo administration?
Maybe the hope was that men like Christopher Ram would have stayed silent and allowed this egregious breach of the Constitution to take place. In a previous letter, I spoke about a letter some PPP hack circulated in Stabroek News in that same water-testing vein. This writer boldly praised the notion of Bharrat Jagdeo serving as Prime Minister after his constitutional term limit is finished. I blasted this charlatan and the suggestion for what it is; a direct and brutal assault on democracy in this nation. So, maybe the testers are muddying the waters in the hope that the sound of silence from wider society will reverberate and then they could claim precedent after the heinous constitutional hijack is completed. This would be the illegal route to power.
When Bharrat Jagdeo departs as President he ceases to be an elected member of the National Assembly. Furthermore, the Prime Minister must be someone who could serve as President. Someone constitutionally barred from holding the post in the first place cannot act as Prime Minister unless the Constitution is flouted, democracy kicked in the face and the rule of law is discarded as garbage. If, as the PPP spinner suggested in the letter, the plan is to have Bharrat Jagdeo installed as Prime Minister in the event that the PPP wins the election, then this route is in clear breach of many things as explained. This move also has another malevolent twist. It would be the perfect way to get an unelected individual to become President in a most destructive circumvention of the democratic expression of the people and the power of their vote. Imagine putting up a front person who is elected President. That front individual then appoints an unelected Prime Minister who then takes power when the elected President resigns halfway during his term. The people of this nation must not allow this travesty in any form to occur.
Yours faithfully,
M. Maxwell
