Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 13, 2011 News
…Moses Nagamootoo also expected to cross-over
Pull Quote: “Corruption has not only grown in magnitude, it has become qualitatively deeper…it has become barefaced…there is no shame. It is done blatantly, openly and it is embarrassing,” Bissessar.
The Alliance for Change (AFC) yesterday dropped a political bombshell in the already charged election environment when it announced that former Personal Assistant to President Bharrat Jagdeo and People’s Progressive Party stalwart, Rajendra Nauth Bissessar, and Peoples National Congress big-wig Dr Richard Van West Charles have both defected into its camp.
The AFC unveiled the two yesterday afternoon at the party’s headquarters’ in Campbellville where several “more than not so subtle” hints were also dropped that PPP/C Central Executive Member, Moses Nagamootoo, could be the next politician to be unveiled in the AFC camp soon.
Dr Van-West Charles who had signalled an intention to challenge for the leadership of the PNCR and subsequently threw his support behind the late Winston Murray and Carl Greenidge, said that there “comes a moment in the consideration and decision of any sincere politician in which the interest of the nation and its future takes precedence over past political accounting, playing the Blame Game and personal interest.”
The politician said that time for him is now. “The PPP/C must be removed from office.”
Dr Van-West Charles said that it is no secret that “one of my objectives in my life is to see that my fellow citizens have an opportunity to live and work in an environment which is fair, just and equitable.
“However, many of our citizens have been denied the opportunity to enjoy the comforts which are enjoyed by millions of citizens all over the world…. More specifically, Guyana’s development has been bedeviled by racial mistrust and hate and political culture. These have been, in many ways, the foundation of our nation’s mistrust.”
He told those gathered that now is the time when it becomes imperative for every Guyanese citizen to put Guyana first.
“Our historical political associations with political parties cannot be the single factor that drives the choice for a political party on Election Day.”
In seeking to discredit assertions that his political background coupled with his relationship to the late Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham would constitute ‘dead weight’ Van West Charles urged that stakeholders come out of the past.
He said that Burnham has been dead for more than two decades while the late Cheddi Jagan has also been dead for well over a decade but yet there is the insistence by some to still stick to the Jagan/Burnham talking points.
Dr Van West Charles said that as citizens “we must be brave in our choice and create the change which will give our sons, daughters, our grandchildren the inheritance of a nation which will provide them the opportunity for their development.”
He said that it is his belief that a coalition of forces with the “experience, the capacity, the integrity and the fearlessness to represent our fellow citizens can catalyze that change and after much deliberations” he has come to the conclusion that the AFC is the best option for such a catalyst.
“I have come to the conclusion that the AFC provides that key which opens the doorway that will permit all Guyanese to find that opportunity.”
Identifying the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, Rajendra Bissessar said that it was the widespread, rampant and barefaced corruption in the ruling administration that has caused him to jump ship and to identify with the standards of the AFC.
He said that corruption in the administration has become so unashamedly practised that he is embarrassed to say that he was a member of the PPP.
“Corruption has not only grown in magnitude it has become qualitatively deeper…it has become barefaced…there is no shame. It is done blatantly, openly and it is embarrassing.”
Gerhard Ramsaroop, in introducing Bissessar, said that he was associated with the PPP for most of his life, “until now.”
Bissessar was a Central Committee member of the PYO and formally joined the PPP in 1980. He became a candidate member of the PPP Central Committee and was integrally involved with the strikes by bauxite and sugar-workers in 1989.
After the PPP took office in 1992, he worked as an advisor to the Minister of Human Services, then to the Minister of Labour and then served as a personal assistant to the President.
Bissessar says that when he started out his political career they sought to take on the dictatorial regime that had occupied the halls of power at the time but the party that he joined is a far cry from its former self.
He said that it is difficult for him to leave an organization in which he has spent so much of his life and had trusted and believed in.
Bissessar said that after the last general election there was a dramatic turn for the worst for the country with the PPP/C at the helm.
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