Khemraj Ramjattan has been expelled from the PPP for publicly insisting that President Bharrat Jagdeo accused him of leaking information to the US embassy and the media.
The Executive Committee (Exco) of the People's Pro-gressive Party, in a letter to Ramjattan on Friday night (received after 11 pm) asked him to give up his parliamentary seat but Ramjattan says he will not. He says he is an elected member of the National Assembly and his constituents are supporting his tenure.
Ramjattan's expulsion is based on what the PPP/C describes as disregard for party rules via a breach of a commitment he made at a February 6 meeting with Exco to cease all public attacks on party leaders and the government; to use the internal party mechanism to air positions; and to abide with the constitution and rules of the party.
Ramjattan says he made no such commitments and does not view his critical comments about the party or its leaders as attacks, but as an attempt to save the party from discredit. He adds that nowhere in the party constitution has he read it enshrined that a party member cannot criticise the party openly.
The party disenchantment with the outspoken Ramjattan came to a head on January 29 after Stabroek News published his call, as head of the Bar Association, for a full and independent inquiry [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] into allegations linking Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] with a death squad. The said day, and 75 days after his column [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] in this newspaper looked at the leadership process within the PPP and dealt with the ripping apart of his proposal to have enshrined in the party constitution a democratic process for succession in the party, General Secretary of the PPP Donald Ramotar wrote Ramjattan expressing alarm that he had displayed contempt for the party by alleging that the 2002 Port Mourant Con-gress was undemocratic.
This started a chain of events at the party level to ostracise Ramjattan, starting with him being lambasted at a central committee meeting [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] the next day when he was accused of leaking information, and leading to him being summoned to a disciplinary hearing on February 6. At the January 31 meeting, Ramjattan was forced to walk out after a PPP/C statement said central committee members had expressed "discomfiture" about sitting in a meeting with Ramjattan in view of the vehemence of his positions, and "their lack of confidence that discussions will remain confidential."
It was at this meeting that Ramjattan said Jagdeo accused him of leaking information to the US Embassy, the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News.
And even after the February 6 disciplinary meeting, Ramjattan insisted that the president had accused him of leaking information to the US Embassy. PPP/C General Secretary, Donald Ramotar had denied this allegation, but Moses Nagamootoo, another central committee and Exco member, confirmed the accusations against the president. Subsequently, 29 members of the central committee signed a statement rebutting the allegations by Ramjattan and Nagamootoo.
Announcing Ramjattan's expulsion yesterday, Exco member Gail Teixeira stood behind the earlier statement, which said that "we, the undersigned members present at the meeting of Freedom House [of January 31] categorically state that neither President Jagdeo nor any other member accused Khemraj Ramjattan of giving information to any foreign embassy or mission."
Asked twice whether there was no member of the committee who had heard the president say to Ramjattan as he was leaving, or about to leave, that "you can go and report to the US Embassy, the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News," or words to that effect, Teixeira stuck with the wording of the statement from the central committee. There is no electronic recording of the central committee meeting, and the minutes of the meeting are not available for discussion until three months later at the next meeting.
And asked whether all 29 members signed the statement voluntarily or were coerced, Teixeira said the signing was voluntary. Cyril Belgrave and Clinton Collymore, who were present at the briefing, asserted that they had signed the statement of their own free will.
Ramjattan, 43, is only the second PPP/C member to be expelled from the party in its history, the first being Balram Singh Rai in the 1960s. Ramjattan became a member of the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO) when he was fourteen. He held the position of chairman of the PYO where he secured the removal of words related to communism from the manifesto, and was seeking to do the same with the party constitution.
A 'painful decision'
Teixeira, reading from a prepared text, said it was a painful decision for the party to expel Ramjattan, and it came after extensive deliberations.
"...The Executive Commit-tee was forced to conclude that Mr Ramjattan has no intention of abiding by the minimum rules and standards necessary to sustain his membership of the party," Teixeira said.
The statement says Ramjattan's public criticisms and accusations against the party and government leaders began shortly after the government took office in 1992 and continued with regularity. Teixeira said he was repeatedly summoned before representatives of Exco to answer charges made against him for being in breach of party rules.
"In those meetings, we have always made it clear to Comrade Ramjattan that there is no rule against party members giving their views in public. We have constantly stressed that the party respects his right of free speech as it does for every other member. However, as a leading member of the party holding a seat on the central committee, his responsibilities need to be discharged in a manner that do not denigrate party and government leaders or bring party and government policies into disrepute," Teixeira said.
She went on to say that on every occasion that complaints were presented to Ramjattan he expressed regret and undertook to abide by the rules and practices of the party. However, these commitments were never honoured.
Teixeira said Ramjattan was invited to a meeting on February 6 where he was accused of disparaging the internal decision-making process of the party; of attacking congress decisions and describing them as undemocratic; and attacking party leaders (in his Stabroek News columns of November 15 and January 31).
She said Ramjattan declared at that meeting that his public and expressed positions were not intended as attacks on the party or its leaders, and expressed regret and undertook to develop better relations with other party leaders and comrades in order to resolve differences.
Teixeira said Ramjattan agreed to cease all public attacks on the party, government and their leaders and to use internal party bodies to express differences and abide by the party rules and practices.
She said Exco asked Ramjattan to issue a statement consistent with his commitments and said Exco determined that any further infractions by Ramjattan would be met with expulsion. She said Ramjattan's views on the Exco proposals and draft statement were to be received last Friday. But the day before he issued a public statement challenging denials that certain allegations he made were false.
Teixeira said Ramjattan's statement was designed to derail the process of reconciliation decided upon by the executive committee and to withdraw his commitments. She said it was also a message to the executive committee that he never intended to abide by his commitments or party rules.
The party executive said Ramjattan had an opportunity at the Exco meeting of February 6 to raise divergent views concerning the central committee meeting on January 31, but chose to disregard this. She added that Ramjattan knew that his statement of February 10 was in clear violation of party rules, because he admitted that he would not allow party rules to force him into not defending himself.
A flower cut to size
"Let a thousand flowers bloom. The democracy that we want to build in Guyana that Cheddi wanted to build in Guyana would let a thousand flowers bloom. It does not matter if I am a little white and I am not red like the rest of my comrades..." Ramjattan told this newspaper.
He said he does not know what the party is talking about when they accuse him of breaching party rules and denied being repeatedly summoned before Exco. On three occasions he had to go before Exco - one of them in relation to a visit he made to Helsinki, another when they wanted him to withdraw proposals to democratise the party decision-making process, and then the most recent one.
He also denied saying he would not criticise the party and maintained he was willing to pass his columns in Stabroek News to Ramotar for him to play censor board before they were published, but Ramotar had said he did not want that.
He saw his right to criticise his leaders as a fundamental part of good governance, and denied that he derailed the process of reconciliation with the party. He said his comrades knew how badly be wanted his membership retained.
His popularity in the party took a nose-dive on March 14, 1994, when in a Stabroek News column he criticised former Home Affairs Minister Feroze Mohamed and then Commissioner of Police Laurie Lewis. He had argued that Mohamed had not used the goodwill period to professionalise the police force nor had he sought to bring in Scotland Yard or Interpol.
"I knew the national security question would become foremost because of race relations in Guyana... but of course the czar and czarinas thought differently," Ramjattan recalled.
He said that after this article, his relationship with his comrades was not as good as it had been in opposition.
But what made it worse was that Ramjattan questioned everything in the way that he said any right-thinking young man would do. "I asked for reasons, and it was this enquiring mind of mine that they did not like."
Then in January 2003 he accused Janet Jagan of using "indiscreet and tasteless language" in her letter about the late Desmond Hoyte turning a blind eye to electoral malpractices in 1968. Jagan's letter was in response to an editorial on the life of Hoyte who had passed away the month before.
Ramjattan said her remarks, while accurate, could be more damaging to national consensus "more pregnant with rancorous possibilities than maddening masses in front of the National Assembly" - referring to the disrespect meted out to Jagdeo at Hoyte's funeral. Ramjattan said he offered an apology to her through Nagamootoo if his statements had caused her personal hurt.
But in his column on November 15 last year, where he explored Nagamootoo's challenge to the presidency, he caused more offence by noting the lack of a democratic decision-making process in the party as it related to the succession issue.
Ramjattan in that column argued that the PPP had always seemed weak-kneed and nervous when leadership challenges emerged, or when proposals were made to institutionalise a method which was direct, broad-based and democratic to elect senior leaders and top candidates. He had proposed that the leadership of the party be elected from the floor, but he described the autocratic decision-making process of the PPP as "Pa she Ma, Ma she Ba and membership suppose to seh Yeah." Translated literally, this means Cheddi Jagan handed down to Janet, Janet Jagan delivered the 'throne' to Bharrat Jagdeo, and the membership should just agree.
'Infantile' remark was last straw
But the straw to break the camel's back was his most recent column where he accused the president without naming him of being infantile at Annandale for lashing out at the media over the death squad allegations involving Gajraj.
But he said it is not a case that he has not tried the internal party mechanism to air his grievances. He said he tried these but found them not to work, observing that the democratic centralism process stifles all initiative.
He noted that six years ago at the Zeeburg Congress of the party, the Section 'K' Campbellville group made proposals to change the party constitution. They were asked to withdraw these by Ramotar and were assured that they would be dealt with at the leadership conferences across the three counties, and could then be taken to the next congress. Nothing was done at the three-county conference levels and the initiative was dismissed by party leaders at the Port Mourant Congress without being given a chance.
He also said when he criticises ministers internally he is told that he wants their work. Noting that the internal mechanism had failed, he expressed the view that he had found the party to be more centralist than democratic.
As a result, members had no right to dissent and had to yield to the majority view. He said whatever arguments are proffered on an issue do not trickle down to the grassroots. He also believed that an element of "majoritarian" dictatorship existed in the party with the cards stacked against anyone who wants to make a change.
"The majority work against you to have you shut up. But you have to allow for dissenting voices to be heard because tomorrow, that minority voice can hold sway and might be right. What it also breeds is tolerance to different people's opinions, which I feel they don't like. They want absolute control," Ramjattan averred.
"The avenues internally are not giving you the proper ventilation... this forces you to go into the columns and then you are accused of breaking party rules... you are either totally adherent to the party line or you shut up. That kind of paternalism is the greatest of crimes in this modern era of democracy."
He added that when he attempts to debate any of his party comrades on issues, they back off, especially since the death of Cheddi Jagan.
But Ramjattan never thought that his right to be different and democratic would cause his expulsion.
"I always knew it would come to a head and I thought that this would come in the form of changes at the party level. As Cheddi taught us, you keep plugging away once you believe in something, and one day you will create some change. We will never evolve unless we are prepared to change. For us to progress as a party, one must evolve," Ramjattan says.
Ramjattan said thousands elected him and lots of persons still want him in parliament, so he will stay on. But Teixeira indicated yesterday that recall legislation is being looked at to give parties the right to recall MPs from the benches.