Last week the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) issued a statement on Mr. Donald Ramotar’s appointment as a Presidential Adviser. The statement made much of the fact that, first, the position is an unsalaried one and, secondly, that, in the opinion of the PPP, Mr. Ramotar is eminently qualified for the job. Both points are enormous red herrings since neither is even remotely related to the controversy associated with the appointment. No one, as far as this newspaper can recall, has made an issue out of Mr. Ramotar’s suitability or otherwise for the post of Presidential Adviser or whether or not the position should be a paid one. In fact, it is the circumstances and timing of the appointment rather than the appointment, per se, that lies at the heart of the controversy. The PPP is fully aware of this and the references in their statement to issues of salary and suitability are, in effect, transparent and decidedly disingenuous attempts to shift the controversy to a non-existent plane.
At the heart of the matter is the issue of campaign financing for this year’s general elections. The Alliance For Change has contended that Mr. Ramotar’s travels across the country as part of Cabinet Outreach teams and his various other public appearances at official presidential functions alongside President Bharrat Jagdeo actually allow him to have his presidential campaign subsidized by the state.
It is entirely true that since his nomination as the PPP’s presidential candidate Mr. Ramotar has been enjoying an enhanced public profile, both inside and outside Guyana, invariably with President Jagdeo at his side. No other reasonable conclusion can be drawn from this development than that the administration has decided to take advantage of its incumbency by linking Mr. Ramotar’s presidential campaign to the high profile of the President. But even that is not the real issue. What has given rise to the campaign funding brouhaha is the fact that Mr. Ramotar’s now routine inclusion in presidential entourages means that he benefits from a share of the state-funded presidential privileges which includes official cars, police outriders and chartered aircraft. Whether Mr. Ramotar is entitled to these state-funded privileges and whether his campaign for the presidency is not benefitting from an improper advantage are the questions that gave rise to the controversy in the first place.
The appointment, or rather, its timing, amounts to an open admission by the government that Mr. Ramotar had, in fact, been enjoying privileges to which he was not entitled. There was really only one way to regularize the situation and that was to hand Mr. Ramotar an appointment that would legitimize his access to the privileges that he has been enjoying. That is the only reason why he was appointed a Presidential Adviser. Of course, there was another option. Mr. Ramotar’s current enjoyment of state-funded facilities could simply have ceased. By appointing him a Presidential Adviser, however, the government has simply sent a signal that the practice, important as they perceive it to be to Mr. Ramotar’s presidential campaign, will continue. It is, frankly, just the kind of response which, in circumstances, will allow the substantive controversy over campaign financing to persist.
Had Mr. Ramotar been appointed a Presidential Adviser a year or eighteen months ago, the appointment would have attracted no more than a routine public announcement. As it happens, its timing causes it to be perceived, and justifiably so, as a move by the government to legitimize what is felt to be the considerable and illegitimate campaign advantage which he had been enjoying up to the time of his appointment as a Presidential Adviser.
In seeking to make an issue of Mr. Ramotar’s unpaid services as a Presidential Adviser, the PPP is simply attempting to draw attention away from the real issue. The matter of salary is of little consequence to either the government or Mr. Ramotar. As to whether or not Mr. Ramotar is – as Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon put it – “an unsophisticated and uncultured novice,” those are matters which are really up to the judgment of the President alone since it is in his gift and no one else’s that Mr. Ramotar’s appointment reposes. The real benefits of the appointment have to do with the ‘perks’ of the position, which are the facility of campaigning at the state’s expense. That facility has now been legitimized, though, Mr. Ramotar’s rivals for the presidency would doubtless argue, crudely and controversially.
