In defending the recent appointment of Donald Ramotar as political advisor to President Bharrat Jagdeo, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday said that it was a “legitimate” appointment based on the identification of a need by the Head of State.
“If there is a need today to get any kind of advisor and that is a decision, once the need arises, the president exercises an authority that I insist is legitimate,” Luncheon said yesterday, when questioned about the timing of the appointment. The President has been without a political advisor for several years now.
Last week, Luncheon announced the appointment of Ramotar, the General Secretary of the PPP and its presidential candidate, as the political advisor to President Jagdeo, who is set to demit office in a few months.
Asked to respond to criticisms that Ramotar’s appointment is an effort to veil his campaigning on state resources, Luncheon said the president was exercising a legitimate authority. Luncheon also noted Ramotar’s ability to discharge the function. “This is not taking an unsophisticated, uncultured, novice and visiting them with this high office,” he added. “So on the grounds of aptitude, on the grounds of his ability to discharge that responsibility, I don’t believe that any sane person would have some concerns about that,” he said.
Luncheon said that “whatever expenditure is incurred” will be subject to scrutiny and made public knowledge. “They couldn’t conceivably be opportunities, with our commitment to disclosures, the accounting and auditing aspects of public accountability, for the treatment, financial or otherwise of Donald Ramotar… to be somehow mysteriously hidden, not made public, not provided for scrutiny, at the level of the Auditor General and the other governance mechanisms in the country,” Luncheon said.
However, the ruling PPP in a statement issued yesterday afternoon said that Ramotar would not receive a salary from the state. The party also said Ramotar had been serving informally as a political advisor to the president, prior to his recent official appointment.
In a brief statement in response to the concern over the use of state resources to advance Ramotar’s campaign, the party explained that since his appointment as General Secretary of the party—a post he still holds—Ramotar has served “formally and informally” as a political advisor to the head of state and the government. “The People’s Progressive Party rejects any suggestion that the service to the nation of the General Secretary and Presidential Candidate Mr. Donald Ramotar as a political advisor is an abuse of state resources,” the party said. “His service over the years also did not see him benefitting from a salary. In fact, Mr. Ramotar should be hailed for offering at no cost to the people of Guyana political advice, in the context of the ongoing transformation of our country currently being led by President Bharrat Jagdeo,” it added.
According to the party, Ramotar will continue to perform with a level of “immense dedication towards nation building and improving the lives of all Guyanese which is worthy of emulation as a patriotic Guyanese.”
Prior to being appointed political advisor, Ramotar had companied the president on trips both locally and abroad. Luncheon, when questioned about this, had said that this was indicative of the role that the party played in the policies of the government.
Ramotar himself subsequently defended his inclusion on these trips after party stalwart Moses Nagamootoo questioned the “state sponsorship” of his candidacy for the party’s presidential nomination. “I am the General Secretary of the PPP and the PPP was elected to the government. In the final analysis, the party gains or loses on what the government does and I have to be interested in everything that happens in government,” Ramotar had said. According to him, the PPP believes in a division between the party and government and does not support the notion of party paramountcy.
“But we don’t believe in building a wall between the two. The government was elected on the manifesto of the party,” he stated.
