No formal process for PPP/C presidential candidate selection
Stabroek News
January 25, 2004
There appears to be no formal process in the ruling People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) for deciding who the presidential candidate for an election will be.
Sources told Stabroek News that the party uses a method of selection, which seems not to be rooted in anything written down.
During a recent press conference, Presidential Adviser Kellawan Lall said Moses Nagamootoo, former minister of information, is aware of the process of the party when it comes to selecting candidates. Nagamootoo recently signalled his intention to run for the party's top post during a television interview with Yesu Persaud, chairman of Dem-erara Distillers Ltd.
But when Stabroek News asked PPP/C General- Secretary Donald Ramotar what that process was, he said that to explain it would require "a lecture" which would have been too time-consuming. He did say, however, that the process gets started months before the election, and in this case it will be around May or June 2006.
Ramotar said it was not strange that Nagamootoo would want to run for the presidency while showing support for the incumbent. He said the party, being a democratic one, accommodates differences of opinion.
But Annan Boodram, in a comment to Stabroek News, said selecting a presidential candidate is not a procedure catered for within the PPP/C constitution.
Boodram, a New York- based writer and long-standing member of the PPP/C, said the party can decide on a leader who automatically becomes the presidential candidate. However, the party's constitution has a clause that empowers any member to force a special congress to discuss any issue deemed important enough by securing the support of a certain percentage of the membership. He could not say what that percentage was.
Boodram said if Nagamootoo's grassroots support remains strong, he could use that instrument to force a congress to decide on the issue - and congress is the highest decision-making forum of the party. Its ruling cannot be overruled by any other body.
He said after the death of then president Cheddi Jagan, there was no clear-cut leader designated, and the PPP/C's Executive Committee met in session and selected Janet Jagan. He said too the same procedure was applied to Bharrat Jagdeo, but first there were "informal discussions and backroom deals."
He said at the Executive Committee level, a number of names were bandied about which eventually boiled down to Moses Nagamootoo and Ralph Ramkarran. After much intense discussion and no consensus, Bharrat Jagdeo's name was thrown into the "pot" as a compromise candidate, and members of the executive fell in with Janet Jagan's suggestion, which was strongly supported by Feroze Mohamed and others in the party.
Attempts to reach Nagamootoo for a comment on the selection process and what sparked his intention to run for the presidency were futile, as were this newspaper's attempts to get hold of a copy of the PPP/C's Constitution.
Party member Khemraj Ramjattan told Stabroek News that he was not aware of any method used by the party to arrive at a leader or candidate.
According to Ramjattan, at one of the party's congresses he had proposed that the matter of selection of a presidential candidate be taken to the congress. He said at that congress, two or three persons could debate on various issues and a vote would be taken afterwards.