Dear Editor,
I refer to your editorial captioned “Central Committee Members” (May 18) wherein you aptly critiqued the process of selecting the 35 members Central Committee (CC) of the ruling PPP. The declared results were and are not a true reflection of the actual voting and popularity or ranking of the nominees for the Central Committee.
My husband and I blanked the Congress, but we were kept in the loop on Congress proceedings. As colleagues in attendance informed me, the voting process was a farce, an engineered outcome to cut down to size those like Anil Nandlall, Frank Anthony, and Vindya Persaud who are aspiring for Presidential nomination.
Anil knows he was cheated of the number three position as did several others from obtaining higher ranking, and he and several others condemned the lack of internal party democracy at the Congress.
My husband and I attended the PPP Congresses from 2001, but we blanked the one held earlier this month because of disappointment in governance. We expected fraud, cooked up numbers for Central Committee positions, at that Congress as indeed happened in all previous Congresses post Cheddi Jagan.
Our worst fears were affirmed by comments uttered by Seeraj, Frank, Vindya, Anil, Donald, Clement and others at the Congress as friends telephoned to inform me about their remarks.
Those cheated were seething in anger. They saw a circulated list of nominees that cheated them of a fair, honest, transparent vote. But there was nothing they could do; they did not want to condemn their own party for sponsoring and holding a fraudulent vote.
The fraud has been a talking point all over the country from streets to markets to offices to homes to social media to phone conversations. It was a most shameful most disgraceful episode given that so many fought against electoral fraud four years ago and have become victims of party fraud.
My friends who attended as delegates all confirmed that the election was a farce. They confirmed they received a list of nominees with instructions who to vote for but ignored it. They reported that ballots were distributed with some pre-checked and given especially to some delegates from the hinterland.
My friends stated that other hinterland delegates cross checked and ticked off nominees against the preferred list of 26 names. That is how Kwame, Nigel, Anand, Mustapha, Collin, Jaffarrally, etc. scored higher than expected and more popular names lower in the rankings.
It was always a tradition that the General Secretary and President ranked number one and two or Vice versa in the voting; it was always cooked that way. But no one expected the entire ranking to be crooked.
How were the numbers cooked up? I read there were almost 1,000 delegates from the hinterland. Many among them and some from the coast were brought to cook up numbers in order to lower the rating of more recognized grass root names like Frank, Vindya, Seeraj, Anil, among others. They were brought to legitimise the rigging.
If there was any doubt about the rigging, these were erased at the first sitting of the central committee on Tuesday mid morning May 6 at Freedom House.
Central Committee members informed me that Anil Nandlall used very colorful oratory slamming the delegates selection, balloting, voting process, and counting of ballots that lacked transparency and by extension legitimacy.
He noted that the entire process was a violation of acceptable democratic principles. Nandlall stated, according to several of those who attended the meeting, that the circulation of a list of nominees for selection to the committee violated party ethics and acceptable democratic practices.
In a rousing speech reminiscent of his lawyerly contributions against the March 2020 general elections fraud, he noted that members and supporters of the party fought against fraud in general elections but they themselves became victims of fraud at the last party Congress.
He made it clear that such practice was unacceptable. He queried rhetorically “what kind of party are we running”? He appealed to the General Secretary and the President to end the fixing of intra party electoral outcomes and other past undemocratic practices.
Editor, your paper can confirm the above from those who were present at that CC meeting. It is unbelievable that an academic would compromise his integrity for a paid propaganda position to claim that the CC election was transparent in contradiction with the testimony of many members of the CC and delegates.
If there was any transparency, it was, to quote Jamaican former PM Bruce Golding, the most “transparent attempt in rigging the outcome of a party election.”
Yours truly,
Sharmila Ally
