Tag Archives: History

Guyana Politics – EXPLOITING THE SENTIMENTS OF THE ELECTORATE – By Ralph Ramkarran

01/17/2019 – 12:38 am

Ralph Ramkarran

SHARED GOVERNANCE

Conversation Tree Blog – January 12, 2019  – by Ralph Ramkarran

In a lengthy article written in 2011 before the general elections of that year, for “Freedom House” on “Countries at the Crossroads 2011: Guyana,” Assistant Professor Joan Mars, of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice of the University of Michigan-Flint, said: “Elections are constitutionally due to be held in 2011.

Calls by the political opposition for shared governance have not been endorsed by the ruling PPP/C administration headed by President Jagdeo; with its consistent absolute majority in parliament, the PPP/C has had little incentive to agree to share power, but the idea may be gathering momentum as a major rallying point in the forthcoming elections.“ Assistant Professor Mars, a former practising lawyer in Guyana, concluded: “The current system of majority rule should be reformed to provide for a power-sharing model that is representative of the ethnic diversity in the population.           Continue reading →

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Guyana: Thieving and Corruption Now Part of National Culture – By Ralph Ramkarran

11/19/2018 – 12:17 am

– By Ralph Ramkarran – Conversation Tree Blog

(On behalf of this blog and its readers, I extend to President Granger best wishes for a speedy recovery).

Ralph Ramkarran

Firemen are first responders who are required to help and protect victims and their property. While purporting to do so, many fireman seize the opportunity to steal from victims. The stealing of property by firemen from the Fly Jamaica aircraft which had mechanical problems and landed with some difficulty at the CJIA, is a shameless and sickening disgrace. It was far more extensive than has been reported.    Continue reading →

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THE FALL OF THE PPP – by Ralph Ramkarran

05/25/2015 – 6:51 am

 THE FALL OF THE PPP

Ralph Ramkarran

Ralph Ramkarran

Posted on May 23, 2015 – by Ralph Ramkarran

The PPP’s boast has always been that it never lost elections. While it gained the highest votes in 1964, it was the PNC that was invited to form the government, which it did in coalition with the United Force. The slogan of ‘cheated not defeated’ resounded through the decades. The slogan is once again rearing its head.

The claim that it lost as a result of fraud allows it to maintain the delusion, for the benefit of its supporters, that it has never lost elections. This also serves to protect its leaders and policies from critical analysis and corrective action and revive its historic claims to victimology, now of an openly posturing ethnic political entity, to sustain the sympathy of its innocent supporters against the tribal hordes. Continue reading →

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Guyana Elections 2015- PIT BULL POLITICS – By Mr Ralph Ramkarran

05/05/2015 – 12:59 am

PIT BULL POLITICS

Ralph Ramkarran

Ralph Ramkarran

Posted on April 25, 2015 by

The OAS Observer Mission, the British High Commissioner, the United States Representative and the Private Sector Commission have all publicly raised concerns about the dangers of inflammatory language being used in the election campaign in Guyana. The US representative went further and pointed out that the consequences that such language could endanger post-election peace and stability.

The pit bull politics of aggression and personal villification were launched this elections season, as it was at the last elections, with Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo. The elections of 2011 were characterized by the excessive use of hostile and accusatory language, focused mainly on the PNCR’s past and abuse of political opponents.   Continue reading →

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Jagdeo and the PPP – Lifestyle and Politics – by Ralph Ramkarran

03/24/2015 – 1:44 am

JAGDEO AND THE PPP – LIFESTYLE AND POLITICS

Ralph Ramkarran

Ralph Ramkarran

Posted on March 21, 2015 –  by

In an article for my blog, www.conversationtree.gy, published in SN last Sunday, I took issue with a statement by former President Jagdeo that implied that Cheddi and Janet Jagan lived in luxury. His argument that the Jagans lived such a lifestyle, comparable to his own at the time his house was built, was an attempt to justify his own Cadillac lifestyle, which over the past few years has come under severe scrutiny and criticism.

There were outraged responses by many people to Jagdeo’s statement, including from Clem Seecharran and, more indirectly, Peter Fraser, two distinguished Guyanese historians living and working in the UK. But the most telling came from Nadira Jagan-Brancier, the Jagan daughter, Dr. Tulsie Dyal Singh and Sadie Amin. Dr. Singh, who conferred with Dr Jagan about his medical condition just before he died and visited his home, said that his own family home in Palmyra on the Corentyne when he was growing up in the 1950s was of similar size to the Jagan home. Sadie Amin gave a description of the modest lifestyle and home of the Jagans, including its leaking roof.   Continue reading →

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Guyana: The PPP should embrace Constitutional Reform – By Ralph Ramkarran

03/10/2015 – 8:10 am

THE PPP SHOULD EMBRACE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM

Posted on March 7, 2015 by  in conversationtree.gy 

Ralph Ramkarran

Ralph Ramkarran

This month the PPP celebrates the life of Cheddi Jagan. In preparing to face the electorate, the party will be today invoking his legacy at Babu John. The electioneering mode that will dominate the proceedings and atmosphere at Babu John will seek to build enthusiasm and momentum, which are critical in the electoral battleground of the Corentyne, whose voting may decisively influence the outcome of the elections, as it did in 2011. To recover the votes it lost in 2011 in the Corentyne, the public can expect a colourful rally with robust verbal assaults on the APNU+AFC alliance.

The PPP could have been facing the electorate in completely different circumstances. Displaying a woeful lack of foresight, it sat back and allowed its opponents to unite, rather than keeping them competing for influence, as they had been doing after the elections. The exposure of the Government/Granger Linden electricity deal by the AFC in 2012 comes to mind. Now, the APNU+AFC political alliance threatens the PPP’s hold on political power.   Continue reading →

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THE PROMISE OF 1950 – by Ralph Ramkarran

05/25/2014 – 2:49 pm

ralphramkarran-THE PROMISE OF 1950

Posted on May 24, 2014 by 

This is an appropriate time, on the occasion of the celebration of Guyana’s 48th Independence Anniversary, only two years before age 50, to begin the assessment of our condition as an independent nation and try to assess the future. Such a discourse is even more urgent at this time when it must be clear to all that Guyana’s post independence political dispensation is poised for a transformation. While politicians contend with the pressures of managing, or even acknowledging, new political developments, leaving frustration in their wake, there is no doubt that change is upon us – change so dramatic that it will transform our political landscape.

The discourse could begin by asking the question: What did a shovelman (Fred Bowman), a Hindu Priest (Pandit Misir), a lawyer of Chinese heritage (Rudy Luck,), a dentist (Cheddi Jagan), a lawyer and a Guyana Scholar (Forbes Burnham), a transport supervisor and trade unionist of mixed but dominant European extraction (Frank Van Sertima), a school teacher (Sydney King), a mixed heritage transport worker (Ivan Cendrecourt), a woman optician (Sheila La Taste), an American-born woman (Janet Jagan) and a trade unionist (Hubert Critchlow), mostly young people, have in common? These are 11 of the 22 General Council members of the PPP of 1950, chosen at random.   Continue reading →

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The Jordanites – by Peter Halder

08/21/2013 – 4:50 am

Guyana Stories by Peter Halder

The Jordanites

by Peter Halder

 Colonial Era

Religion played a fundamental role in the British administration of its colony of British Guiana.

It was most probably the policy of the British that in a multiracial country with many races- African, East Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, the indigenous Amerindian, European and their inter-mixtures- and with different cultures and religious practices, the foundation, growth and spread of the Christian religion, could and would convert, indoctrinate, assimilate and unite the many races into a united nation. The colonialists went further. They recognized that the older generation was probably beyond conversion, indoctrination and assimilation, so their policy was to focus on the children, the new generation.

Churches dotted the landscape of Georgetown and environs, as well as the countryside.    Read More »

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Quotes from Marcus Tullius CICERO – (106 BC – 43 BC)

04/10/2013 – 6:43 am

CICERO (106 BC–43 BC), full name Marcus Tullius Cicero, was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, philosopher and one of Rome’s greatest orators.

Read  about the life of CICERO here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

Here are a few Quotes by Marcus Tullius CICERO   (106 BC – 43 BC)

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”  ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”  ― Marcus Tullius Cicero    Continue reading →

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Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II (morph sequence)

09/19/2012 – 12:39 am

Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II (morph sequence)

Queen Elizabeth II – From Childhood to her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

This is a video tribute to Queen Elizabeth II on achieving 60 years as the constitutional monarch of the Commonwealth realms, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations, head of state of the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories, Supreme Governor of the Church of England and in many of her realms she carries the title Defender of the Faith.

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