Jagdeo is quoted as saying, “We will never forget this.” He was speaking in relation to his arrest and that of his PPP corrupted collogues. Mr. Granger needs to not miss what Jagdeo said. Jagdeo was President during the time of Guyana’s worse homicides, murders and civil chaos. When he was asked about it, it was reported that he said that it is criminals killing criminal. Mr. Jagdeo don’t play. If he says he will not forget “this”, the Granger-led administration needs to pay attention.

Jagdeo is saying that the arrests are witch-hunting and tools that are being used by the current government to frustrate to opposition’s work. Well, Mr. Jagdeo is only trying to spin the facts. It is clear what the Granger administration is doing. The Coalition ran on the premise that if elected they will jail all the corrupt PPPites. (They might not be following through with many of their other promises, but this one seems high on their agenda).

The stench of corruption was unbearable during the Jagdeo era. The secret contracts; the hiring of Fip Motilall and other trickster contractors; the billions in kick-backs; their refusal to set up the independent Public Procurement Commission, the underpriced and undersold Pradoville housing villages, etc., were all well documented gangster schemes to bilk the Guyanese people and steal billions of dollars. Now that the chickens are coming home to rust, Jagdeo is trying to make it look like these arrests are based on current events.

Every Guyanese know that in arresting the PPP members, the Government is fulfilling a campaign promise. Let the records reflect that during the 2015 campaign, the United Republican Party (URP) also called for the investigating and incarceration the PPP members who are found guilty of the charges. No government should be allowed to thief and disburse of Guyana’s wealth the way the PPP did while in office.

All the ill-gotten possessions, from all those associated with the PPP, should be repossessed by the government. Houses, vehicles, lands and other properties must be seized and reassigned to the country’s coffers. Those found guilty of stealing from the country need to be jailed and humiliated for their actions. Guyana needs to adopt the posture of the USA, where the law is not dispensed to only a certain kind of people.  The legal playing field needs to be leveled to see members of parliament, managers, Permanent Secretaries, CEO and even members of the armed services, hauled before the courts and called into account for their wrong doings.

The United Republican Party wishes to applaud the Granger administration for moving forward with questioning those suspected of embezzling tax payers’ money. This is the kinds of changes that the people voted for. However, the URP wishes to suggest that the same investigative intensity that is now focused on the PPP, be similarly dispensed among the ranks of the Coalition members. We would like to know about the Norton Bond situation. The country is also interested in the GT&T sale and the balance owed. Was it really paid, as Mr. Harmon had said? If so, where is the money?

An investigation needs to go into the Jubilee Park fiasco. How is it that we were told that the monies were donations, yet the tax payers were billed for hundreds of millions of dollars to cover the related cost? The voters would also like to know why the BK dumpsite controversy was so hurriedly awarded. There is also the case of the material from the Specialty Hospital that went missing and has not been fully accounted for.

Editor, the URP is simply sighting additional cases that the Granger-led administration needs to swiftly begin to look into, with the same amount of judicial scrutiny as that given to their political adversaries. These cases of perceived corruption from the current Government need to be quickly resolved. Because come 2020, if the Coalition loses to the PPP, the current members of parliament and those associated to the PNC-Coalition, need to know that it will be hell to play in Guyana. When Jagdeo said “We will never forget this”, it was not a suggestion. It was a promise. Maybe even a threat. The Pandora’s Box of political vendetta in Guyana has now been opened. This might not end well.

The politics in Guyana is of such that you can become hypocritical and duplicitous, even to your own hurt. When I heard my friend and fellow patriot, Dr. V. Ramayya claming that he might well return to the fold of the PPP, my heart sunk. I was shaken for many reasons. One is that I know Dr. Ramayya. He is not a soup drinker. He is conscionable and lives by the dictates of his conscience. In fact, that is what drove him away from the PPP. He was a student of Dr. Jagan and he loved the PPP. However, what the party later became under Jagdeo was too much for him to stomach. He could not remain in a party that was the home of such looting of the treasury. He left because Jagdeo had become a dictator and he was taking the party down the wrong road.
Dr. Ramayya broke ranks with the PPP, allied himself with the AFC and became one of their Executive Members. Both in 2011 and again in 2015, Dr. Ramayya was credited with delivering to the AFC and then the Coalition, several thousands votes, from the Berbice areas, especially around the Port Mourant area where he lived. However, in realizing that the PNC-Coalition was shaping up to be just as corrupt and two-faced as the PPP, Dr. Ramayya – like hundreds of others – did the honorable thing and parted ways from them. An obvious disillusioned man, Dr. Ramayya, searched his soul to find a rational for the corrupt and dictatorial ways in which the newly formed Coalition is behaving.
It must have been with much shamefacedness that he attended the 20th death anniversary memorial for President Cheddi Jagan, which was held at Babu John, Port Mourant. And what would have been a huge blow to his conscience, was for him to publicly admit that he is considering rejoining the ranks of the PPP. I know Dr. Ramayya and all those who follow him, know him enough to know that he must now be a very disturbed man to even voice the possibility of joining and party that Jagdeo is a member of. Dr. Ramayya knows too well the hurt, disgrace, and moral degradation Jagdeo inflicted on this country. Dr. Ramayya spoke openly about the atrocities, cronyism and power-drunkenness of Jagdeo. So for him to state publically that he is contemplating a redo of his alignment with Jagdeo’s PPP, is almost unthinkable.
When Dr. Ramayya interacted with those thousands of people and caused them to switch from the PPP to the AFC and then to the Coalition, it was because they believed in him. He built a case against the PPP. He proved to them (mostly Indians) that the PPP and Jagdeo had left and forsaken them. He show how Jagdeo was living like a king in his mansions while the PPP supporters where living in squalor. He talked about the PPP abandonment of the farmers. He made the case to them that Jagdeo and his favored henchmen were fleecing the country and selling out our natural-resource wealth to the highest bidder. It was not a hard sell but to get PPP followers to change their voting pattern was a huge task. Yet he did it, often times using millions of dollars of his own money.
Over the past two years nothing has changed. Jagdeo is still living like a king with property and assets worth billions that he has yet to account for. The previous PPP politicians are still wealthier than any of the politicians in the Caribbean. They too cannot account for the bloated bank accounts. And while there is yet no formal criminal case against Jagdeo and his crew, all the PPP supporters know that Jagdeo enriched himself, family and friends with ill gotten gains off the backs of the Guyanese tax payers. And these are facts that Dr. Ramayya also knows.
So, why would he even think of returning to the PPP fold? Well, no one really knows Dr. Ramayya’s heart but I believe that he is hurting so much from the wounds inflicted on him by the PNC- Coalition, that he is left stupefied and disheartened. Maybe he is even planning to align with the PPP to get back and Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan. What is obvious is that Dr. Ramayya is not himself.
Editor, my caution to Dr. Ramayya is this. If he goes back to the PPP, a number of things will happen. He will lose the respect of many of those whom he convinced to leave the PPP. They know the PPP has not changed and so they will look at Dr. Ramayya as a two faced hypocrite. He will also lose the respect of his family, who will see him as a man that is not true to his conscience. However, what Dr. Ramayya needs to know is that Jagdeo is a brutal politician and he will never trust him. If he return to the PPP Jagdeo will use him like a stool pigeon. Jagdeo will subtly make him pay penance for the hurt and damage he inflicted on the PPP.
And for sure, Jagdeo will watch him with a jaundiced eye because Jagdeo full well knows that if Dr. Ramayya left the party once, based on the dictates of his conscience, he will probably do it again. Going back to the PPP will see the credibility of Dr. Ramayya disappear. He will never again be able to live with himself.
The United Republican Party (URP) welcomes people like Dr. Ramayya; people with pure consciences. We admire those who would stand up against any person or political ideology. Party politics have made some Guyanese mad but some of us are still patriotic and are willing to put country first. Dr. Ramayya is one such person. However, while we would be willing to extend an arm to Dr. Ramayya, we would want him to join us only as he feels comfortable. What he cannot do however, is go back to bed with the Devil! My friend Dr. Verasammy Ramayya, I will be praying for you. Namaste.

Press Release: Friday, February 24, 2017

The PNC-Coalition has a right to be very fearful about the Court Of Appeal (COA) ruling last week. The reason they are trembling is because they are doing to the country exactly what Jagdeo and the PPP said they did to the voters: they are ignoring them. Now Jagdeo and the PPP have been traversing the country apologizing to their supporters and the country. And though reluctantly, the PPP followers and some other citizens seem to be willing to forgive Jagdeo for his unforgivable misdeeds. He has also recently won the leadership of his party and is now the General Secretary, which positions him to be the next PPP presidential candidate.

So the decision by former Chief Justice Ian Chang’s, ruling that the two-term presidential limit is unconstitutional and the upholding of that ruling by the COA, play right into Mr. Jagdeo’s hands. It is undoubted that Mr. Jagdeo is the single most powerful political and racists, leader in Guyana. And while President David Granger had the opportunity of competing for the status of being a powerful leader, he and his Coalition are doing so badly at keeping their promises and managing the Country, that he has squandered his opportunity to provide any significant rivalry to Jagdeo.

Once on the political ropes after losing two consecutive national elections, Mr. Jagdeo has been awarded with a second breath, and maybe a second attempt at the Presidency, because of the mammoth failures of the PNC-Coalition. Jagdeo only remains relevant because the Granger-led administration has failed and utterly disappointed the Guyanese citizenry.
Additionally, the COA has framed the appeal as a constitutional matter, thus making any appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) by the current administration, an uphill task. It is not likely that a court comprising of foreign jurists will rule on the constitutionality of a national matter, if only because the precedent would be far reaching and might even affect political decisions in the countries in which they reside. I believe that the CCJ will refer the matter back to the COA and the matter will be stayed.

However, what is of significant note is the notion that Mr. Jagdeo is rumored to have intentions of running again as the President of Guyana. Which begs the question, Are there no other figures in the PPP that the Central Committee can look to for future leadership? Why in such as old party, one man seems to be the only answer to their survival question?
The United Republican Party (URP) believes that Mr. Jagdeo was not good for Guyana and will not be good for Guyana given his track record. He presided over a woefully corrupt, vicious, vindictive and authoritarian government. We believe that it is to the detriment of Guyana for him to be reelected to lead this nation. In light of these facts, the URP calls on the President to immediately put systems in place to have the COA’s ruling be put as a referendum to the people.

The URP notices, given the COA’s latest ruling, that any decision the Parliament makes is likely to be challenged and over turned in court. We were also reliably informed that the PPP are opposed to any constitutional reform, given the powers resident in the current constitution. It is the belief of the PPP that given free and fair elections in 2020, they will regain the government. The URP is therefore suggesting that the government expedites the constitutional reform amendments – regulating the Presidential powers, the proportional representation, etc, – and have all those form part of the referendum.

The divisive, winner-take-all, unpatriotic, kind of politics in Guyana is becoming starker. Should a seething Jagdeo regain the Presidency with its Executive powers, in this weakened nation, Guyana might never recover from what he is likely to do to us using those executive powers. If the PNC-Coalition with its AFC arm is indeed concerned about the future of Guyana; if they are indeed patriotic and visionary, they will immediately put measures in train to stave off any end-run my Jagdeo.
The Granger-led administration should follow the suggestion of the Court Of Appeal, and put the issue in a referendum to the people. This is the only guaranteed approach, except of course the Coalition knows for sure they will win because they have some sinister plan of returning to power. dc@tbsllp.com

Yours truly,
Dr. Vishnu Bandhu Leader,
URP