PPP prepares to lift lid on Nagamootoo’s skeletons

Last Updated on Monday, 8 September 2014, 17:51 by GxMedia

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) on Monday frowned on the Alliance For Change’s (AFC) Nagamootoo-Hughes ticket for general and regional elections, promising to uncover a bag of skeletons about that opposition party’s presidential candidate.

AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan has told Demerara Waves Online News that Moses Nagamootoo and Nigel Hughes were his presidential and prime ministerial candidates that would have to be approved by his party’s membership at next month’s conference. He said that combination was a mix of experience, working-class roots, integrity and human rights representation.

But PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee dismissed the Nagamootoo-Hinds ticket and said his party intended to reveal a number of skeletons on Nagamootoo, a former long-serving and popular member of the incumbent party. “If it worrries us? No I think it will help us. We have so much on Mr. Nagamootoo…Mr. Nagamootoo has so many skeletons in his cupboard, not all has been disclosed as yet. Some has been disclosed but there is much more to be disclosed so just keep your powder dry and use it at the right time,” he said.

Asked whether those ‘skeletons’ were in the cupboard while Nagamaootoo was a PPP member, Rohee said some were there but more have accumulated since his departure.

Ramjattan has conceded that his party’s critics would attack Hughes because he was Company Secretary for the Amaila Falls Hydropower Inc- a project that the AFC had criticized seriously. He restated that the failure to make the disclosure was a mistake and that party has since developed a protocol to deal with such instances.

Nagamootoo has been criticized for supporting the Former President’s Benefits law while he was a PPP lawmaker, but he has since condemned it now that he is an AFC member.

Guyanese are likely to go to the polls ahead of the 2016 constitutional deadline due to the AFC-sponsored no-confidence motion that could be debated and passed early next month by the National Assembly. That means the President and Cabinet will have to resign and remain in office until elections are called in 90 days. Alternatively, President Donald Ramotar can call early elections ahead of the passage of the motion.