Dear Editor,
Loyalty to a cause and loyalty to a party are not necessarily synonymous.
To be true to a cause requires being true to oneself. Loyalty to a party requires political discipline; again, not to be confused with the morality of right or wrong.
Ralph Ramkarran served at the altar of party discipline and today, warrior though he is, has fallen the way all party loyalists inevitably do, when a conflict of conscience forces them to decide for the “good or evil side.”
I regard Ralph as my friend and political colleague. A gentleman, who deliberative by nature, abhorred the nasty, brutish cuss down culture that he was forced to dwell amongst. He was always trying to refine and redirect to loftier heights those with whom he was not politically attuned. If he was a Marxist, he dwelt amongst Stalinists. His was a mission impossible and for this he suffered much. He was threatened, cussed out, shunned and openly disrespected by many of his comrades when he tried to be objective in his judgments.
As Speaker, he performed his duties with competence and fairness, to reach for excellence would have brought him into a realm for which the environment would not have supported him. The challenge before him then was one of choices. It is here he failed.
I empathize with him as I know of his pride from early youth in witnessing the birth and growth of his beloved party. I share his dream for an independent and prosperous Guyana and I felt his pain as he became an unwilling participant to the plummeting fortunes and descent intocorruption of his party and government.
For the past twenty years he fought to reverse this betrayal of the ideals for which he and the founders of his party fought. That he did not know when to walk away will forever be an indictment on his judgment but I salute his courage in finally doing the right thing.
The tragedy for him is that when he reflects he will realize that had he spoken out a long time ago, he would have enlisted the support of all right thinking Guyanese and today his party would have redeemed itself.
For them it may be too late, for him it is a new beginning, again choices are to be made.
Yours faithfully,
Keith Scott MP
