Nagamootoo to seek PPP presidential nomination
Stabroek News
November 15, 2003

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Former Information Minister, Moses Nagamootoo has announced his intention to seek nomination as the PPP's presidential candidate at the 2006 general elections.

This will likely put him in a contest with President Bharrat Jagdeo who is expected to again seek his party's nomination for the post.

Nagamootoo made the announcement when he appeared on businessman Yesu Persaud's programme, Eye on the Issues, aired on Sunday evening on CNS Channel 6.

He told this paper in a lengthy and revealing interview to be published in its Current Affairs supplement next Wednesday, that he is doing so to make the contest exciting and to offer the party a choice of style and leadership qualities.

Nagamootoo was passed over while out of the country when the PPP chose President Jagdeo to succeed Janet Jagan as President after she gave up the position because of ill health. At PPP congresses, Nagamootoo has perennially been a top vote-getter

He told Persaud that he "will make himself available and I will offer up myself first to my party and then to the people of Guyana".

Nagamootoo, who was a candidate at the 2001 elections but whose name is yet to be extracted from the list even though vacancies in the National Assembly have arisen, has not been invited to join the Jagdeo administration in which he served before leaving to complete his legal studies at the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad.

Also, he told Persaud that the PPP at the Central Committee and Executive level needed to do things more businesslike. "We are the PPP in the old Marxian term - the vanguard party. We have to lead and we have to lead by example. We have to deal with issues." Consequently, he said, "I am not going to be functioning from now on in a regular manner. I feel if I cannot change things from going to meetings, I will stay away from meetings. It reflects my own revolutionary outlook. I am not one of those yes men or cronies."