President likely to step down
PRESIDENT Janet Jagan is likely to announce she is stepping down from the office because of health reasons in an address to the nation tonight, sources said yesterday. The Chronicle understands the move was under consideration by the leadership of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), the main partner in the PPP/Civic alliance government. The PPP Executive Council met late last week and a short statement after a special session of the party’s Central Committee yesterday said "the meeting resulted from the need to discuss matters of importance." "At this meeting important decisions were taken which will be communicated to the nation by President Janet Jagan in a broadcast on Sunday evening", the statement said. It added that the Central Committee, the highest decision-making forum of the PPP outside of its congress, will soon issue a more detailed statement. The PPP was last night expected to brief the Civic component of the development, sources told the Chronicle. Sources said Finance Minister, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, is likely to be named President until fresh general elections in 2001, in keeping with the ‘A Team’ formula the PPP/Civic had for the December 15, 1997 polls. That team was President Jagan, Prime Minister Sam Hinds (Civic) and Jagdeo (PPP). Under the Constitution, the Prime Minister is next in line for the presidency but the arrangement for the PPP/Civic alliance government is premised on the PPP getting the top post and the Civic the prime ministerial position, a source explained. President Jagan is expected to explain the new arrangement in her address tonight, according to the sources. The President, 78, had a mild heart attack last month when she was briefly hospitalised here but subsequent tests at a clinic in Ohio in the United States showed she does not require surgery, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, had reported. The Chronicle understands President Jagan was back in her office last week after a period of rest and she chaired the regular Cabinet session Tuesday. She Friday also attended the first ever Children’s Parliament when it met at the National Cultural Centre in Georgetown. But sources said she has not been as active as she was before her hospitalisation last month. Luncheon told reporters Friday that President Jagan is due for a re-evaluation of her medical condition later this year. He told his regular press conference that the tests in the U.S. indicated that Mrs. Jagan’s cardiac problem was not of any significance to warrant surgical intervention. However, she has been put on an exercise schedule and on medication after her return from the Akron City Hospital in Ohio. An angiography showed the President had a mild heart attack earlier last month when she was hospitalised briefly here. Luncheon reiterated that while the President’s medical advisers have said that there is no need for surgical intervention they recommended an aggressive non-surgical medical programme. According to him, based on this medical management, the President will know how well and how fast she is responding to this process. Meanwhile, Trade Minister Mr. Michael Shree Chan is reportedly doing well after brain surgery recently in the U.S., Luncheon reported. "Minister Shree Chan and I spoke recently and he is receiving his radiation therapy which is expected to last about one month," he said. When this is completed, Luncheon said, the minister’s medical advisors would examine his actual status and his return to Guyana will be decided. Luncheon noted that Minister Shree Chan wants the Guyanese public to know that he is feeling fine and is raring to return home. Because of Minister Shree Chan’s illness, the President is also likely to announce a Cabinet reshuffle in her address tonight, a source said.
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