The Faceless Candidate

Michael Vishnu Singh

The PPP/Civic has propelled onto the Guyanese political scene a faceless candidate for the Presidency of Guyana—Donald Ramotar. He is the least appealing of the three major candidates for the Presidency. What any intelligent voter ought to ask is why they are being urged to vote for Donald Ramotar as the leader for Guyana when his own party has not shown great confidence in him.

I say this because the PPP/Civic did not select him for a cabinet post for the almost twenty years they have been in power. The party did not even have the confidence to make him a Presidential advisor until he was selected to be their Presidential candidate. What is the average voter to think? Surely this person who was head of the Party (this was the position that Dr. Jagan held for his life) should have commanded greater attention. Also since he was head of the party and wanted to be president surely he could have ensured that he was given a prominent role so that the electorate could get motivated to see him as the next leader of Guyana.

Let us look for a moment at Ramotar’s performance as leader of the party. Since he has been leader the party has secured fewer votes with each election since 1997. From a high of 220,667 in 1997 they dropped to 210,013 in 2001 and to 182,186 in the 2006 election. This was during a period when the main opposition party –the PNC/R was undergoing tremendous upheavals. Again a voter might wonder at Ramotar’s decision (along with his backers in the Central Committee) to not hold a scheduled party congress earlier this year. A strong leader would have welcomed the opportunity to bring his team to the forefront of the party and give its members a glimpse of what he planned for his administration. Instead the congress was postponed with the lame excuse that the party wanted to focus on the election. In today’s world a strong and visionary leader would have seized the chance to galvanize its base Also, surely two years ago, the leader should have realized it was going to be inconvenient to hold a congress in an election year if that was really the reason.

Compare the way the PPP/Civic dealt with its members with that of the PNC/R. That party did not think it inconvenient to ask its members to listen to their candidates for the Presidential positions debate. They allowed members to vote even though many recognized that the vote could be close and so engender divisive feelings. That party and its leadership had the courage to face these challenges and believe that as in the USA the vast majority of party members would eventually support a democratic process of choosing a Presidential candidate. The PNC/R trusted its members.

If a voter thinks through my argument they will realise that the key players in the PPP/Civic did not only not think Ramlogan worthy of holding a key position in its administration they also did not believe he could debate and win the support of party members against its field of Presidential hopefuls—Moses Nagamootoo, Ralph Ramkarran, Clement Rohee and Gail Tiexiera. Ramlogan, though leader, did not feel that he could go through a similar process that both the PNC/R and the AFC did. Those parties trusted their membership to choose the best person. If you as the leader of your party cannot trust your own members how can you ask the average PPP/C supporter to vote for you?

The people of Guyana are not really choosing a party to lead them they are choosing a leader for their country. At this critical time in the world where both the USA and Europe are struggling to recover from the financial crisis of 2008, where even China is expected to have a slowdown in growth in the next few months and where the third largest economy Jagan is still reeling from its massive earth quake do we want to choose someone who could not even debate his fellow Presidential candidates, who did not have the courage and vision to change his party’s structure to match what the nation was yearning for.

Are we to blindly choose someone who is scared to debate with his fellow Presidential Candidates? If he can’t stand up to them how can we believe he will be able to lead in a world where clarity and vision are badly needed? Should we vote for someone whom his own comrades did not consider significant enough to be part of their own administration? Should PPP supporters vote for someone who despite the claimed achievements of the party since 1997 has failed to increase their vote?

Donald Ramotar is a candidate without an image, without a face we can believe in. Guyana needs someone like David Granger. He beat the seasoned politicians of the PNC. He was daring enough to design a means of winning support across the political spectrum by creating APNU. He has the vision to put before the electorate the ideals of Partnership and National Unity. He has won over a respected intellectual and former enemy of the PNC—Rupert Roopnarine. When voters see them together they recognize that their yearning for an end to old time politics is here. They know that they can support the dream of going beyond the PPP and PNC.