Secret balloting poses danger -Jagdeo

President Bharrat Jagdeo on Monday warned that using a secret balloting process to decide on the PPP’s next presidential candidate could be dangerous as candidate hopefuls could promise persons things in order to get their votes.

Jagdeo, when asked at a news conference whether he supports the party employing the secret ballot process, said it will be up to the party to make that decision but declared he will eventually make his choice known. “I am going to say openly who I support [and] I am going to say for what reasons too…” he declared.

Jagdeo also said that unlike what many thought, he and former President Janet Jagan were never the only persons in the running to be the candidate when they were selected in 1997, as others had privately expressed hopes and there were “brutal” internal processes to make the selection.

The President referred to the discussions that took place when former President Janet Jagan was selected as the party’s presidential candidate when every member of the party and the central committee spoke. “If people have attained a certain level of maturity in a party you would want, you would expect them to have a view on a candidate who would take you into the elections. So this is how it was done, every person expressed support for Janet Jagan or said no and it was open, it was open and some people said no too,” Jagdeo said.

He said the process that they have used has been used about three times before. “Now, some people, I think they do the mathematics and they see that the odds may not be in their favour so they are arguing for a new process and I suspect if you have the new process and they lose there again they would find some other reason, the Corbin syndrome,” he added.

According to Jagdeo, many persons keep suggesting how the party should select its candidates and he questioned why the persons don’t tell the PNC how to select its candidate or the board of a company how to select its chairman. “But more importantly, there is a danger we have always been worried that people could promise others things to get them to vote for them and this is the danger of secret balloting …” Jagdeo said.

He said that the party has an open process where they give all the candidates who have expressed interest a chance to present their case. “If one person becomes unethical and say when I win you would become a minister in the new government, then it starts leading to things that we don’t tolerate in the PPP,” he said.

Jagdeo added that while letter writers in the Stabroek News and many others who have written letters have given the “impression” that he and Janet Jagan were the only candidates in their times, “I sat in on those meetings, you had at least six candidates examined.”

Pressed further, Jagdeo said the persons did not express their view publicly because “that is how we do our business because internally we are very blunt and stuff like that. The internal discussions that take place are brutal sometimes but many people thought that it was just Janet Jagan was the only candidate or Bharrat Jagdeo and it wasn’t so. Lots of candidates were examined.”

Presidential candidate contender Ralph Ramkarran has been adamant that secret balloting has been part of the PPP’s tradition in cases where there is more than one candidate for party offices and he has repeatedly called for this to be honoured in deciding the party’s front man for this year’s general elections.

Ramkarran, in a letter to the party’s General Secretary Donald Ramotar, who is also vying for the candidate position, indicated his desire to be the party’s presidential candidate and laid out his expectation that if there is more than one nominee for the position, that there will be a secret ballot to select the candidate.

Ramotar has said that whether secret balloting would be used remains unresolved. Asked at a recent news conference whether an open vote would be an inhibiting factor for members, Ramotar said that he doubted it would inhibit anything. “Why should it inhibit anything? We have had a tradition of all kinds of voting in this party. Our party is not a party where people should feel inhibited or afraid of nobody. What kind of party would we have if people are afraid to express their opinions and views in the party? Then we won’t have a properly functioning organization at all so I don’t see that that’s a problem,” he said.