The 27th Congress of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has resolved to remain a party for the working class without shunning the private sector and to work on more community participation with law enforcement agencies.
“Participants welcomed the priority attention given to the security situation by the current administration and suggested additional measures in this regard including greater citizens’ participation in law enforcement agencies,” General Secretary of the PPP, Donald Ramotar, stated on Monday at a Freedom House press conference on the Congress.
Ramotar said calls were made for the government to pursue additional measures to rein in the crime situation and deep concern was expressed about the support given to the criminal elements in the society by sections of the PNC/R.
The two-day Congress concluded on Sunday evening just six hours before one of its delegates, Balram Kandhai was shot and killed by gunmen as he and others were leaving the venue. The gunmen, who laid siege to the Rose Hall town in Berbice and embarked on a spree of pillaging before escaping, also killed two policemen.
Ramotar said one workshop dealt with a number of suggestions on the crime situation but the focus was to seek ways to get communities more involved. “It would not be wrong to say that the initiative has been tied in with the menu of measures that the President had announced. A lot of it is how the party could help to give support to some of those initiatives at the level of the communities... to help and encourage people to get involved in protecting themselves,” he stated.
Ramotar pointed out that the menu of measures could not be implemented overnight so its effects could not be judged as yet.
But he noted that the President had moved to single-source weapons and protective gear for the police, which would be a faster process to achieve the goal of a better-equipped force.
Ramotar said it would need a lot more thought before a statement could be made by the party on what would constitute a state of emergency, given the current situation where banditry and police killings were widespread in Guyana.
Ramotar declared there were no big surprises at the Congress. “Sometimes we hear that we are not democratic, and when we have democratic decisions taken we hear about reluctance [to move away from Marxist/Leninist ideals].”
He pointed out that the decision was made by the Congress, and not the leadership of the party, for it to remain a working-class party. “It doesn’t mean we are hostile to the development of the private sector. We recognise the private sector has a big and important role to play in our economy. We’ve said that even before 1992 [when the PPP won the elections] and we’ve said that after 1992. However, while saying that, we do not want to envisage a situation where the working class will have no rights or the private sector would have rights at the expense of the working people. We believe that there are conditions ...in which both the working people and the business community would develop simultaneously,” Ramotar stated.
Ramotar said he did not see a conflict of interest with the Marxist/Leninist ideology of the ruling party, because, he pointed out, there was difference between the state and the party.
He said part of the problem in Guyana was that people were still trying to overcome the philosophy of “paramountcy of the party.”
He said: “We don’t want to repeat that kind of mistake but we want to keep our party’s character as it is while, at the same time, the state is developing but we’re trying the protect, as much as we can, the working people of our country.”
The motion proposed by the Section ‘K’ Campbellville group sought to expunge any reference to Marxism/ Leninism and Socialism from the party’s constitution, and for the posts of party leader, general secretary and chairman to be contested at the Congress.
Chairman of the Congress Committee, Clement Rohee, noted that the motion went through all the processes and got wide publicity in the media. He said one advantage the proposers of that motion had was media publicity.
What was amazing to him, Rohee said, was the high degree of understanding and awareness of the complexities of the issues, and the fact that the delegates did not see the need to do away with certain principles which stayed with the party over the years.
“Based on their collective judgement that we could continue to make progress. We didn’t lose the elections because of what we stood for. People never rejected us because of what we stood for. People accepted us for what we stood for, and the collective wisdom of the delegates of Congress... they said that we should continue in this vein. Everything was done in an open and democratic manner.”