Presidential Advisor on Governance, Gail Teixeira, has been nominated to contest the People’s Progressive Party’s presidential candidacy, the party said in a statement last Friday.
Teixeira, who previously held ministerial portfolios for health; home affairs; and culture, youth, and sport, is the newest candidate for the party.
The others are Donald Ramotar, Clement Rohee, Moses Nagamootoo and Ralph Ramkarran.
In its statement, the PPP said that it has been advancing its discussion on the issue of choosing a presidential candidate for the 2011 general and regional elections.
According to the party, at the last meeting of the executive committee, five persons were identified as having expressed interest, or were nominated to be the presidential candidate.
“These discussions are expected to be intensified with a view to coming to a conclusion, where the candidate would be selected as soon as possible,” the party statement said.
As the PPP prepares to select its candidate, there has been much discussion with regards to how this will be done.
At least two of the nominees — Nagamootoo and Ramkarran — believe that the candidate should be chosen through a secret ballot, while Ramotar prefers the old method – a show of hands, and Rohee said he had an open mind to either method. However, President Bharrat Jagdeo, who is constitutionally barred from running for president, told a recent news conference that the PPP is likely to stick to its old process of selecting a new presidential candidate to contest the 2011 general elections. He warned that there is a danger in going down the secret balloting road, which is being called for by some party members. “We have always been worried that people can promise others things to get (people) to vote for them… it will lead to something we don’t tolerate in the PPP,” he said.
According to Jagdeo, the old system has worked for the party in previous years, and he has rejected the idea of the use of secret balloting. The key aim of secret balloting is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter through intimidation or bribery.
He dismissed suggestions that there has never been multiple candidates contesting the presidential post before. In fact, he said, there were five or six candidates in some instances, including the years he and the late President Janet Jagan won the nomination.
It is president Jagdeo’s opinion that those who are calling for the secret ballot method might have realized that winning with the old system would be a difficult task.
“I suspect that, if you have a new process and they lose there again, they would still find some other reason,” he said.
In a paid advertisement appearing in the Stabroek News recently, Ramkarran had said he expected that the elections for the presidential candidate would be held by secret ballot if there is more than one nominee for the post.
In a statement last September, the PPP said it had agreed on a selection procedure for its presidential candidate for the next general elections: “The document, which was recently ratified, reinforces the party’s longstanding and tested procedure on the selection of a presidential candidate.” According to the PPP, the procedure allows for nomination/expression of interest by interested individuals, deliberations at the level of the executive committee, and subsequent approval by the central committee. The approved candidate will then be announced to the membership through regional conferences.
This process was used in the selection of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and current President Bharrat Jagdeo to contest general elections. Further, the document outlines a code of conduct to which potential presidential candidates and their supporters must adhere before and after the selection of the agreed-on presidential candidate.
