Ramkarran rules out returning to active politics

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:17 by GxMedia

Former senior member of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Ralph Ramkarran is currently not interested in returning to active politics, in the wake of expectations that he might endorse the opposition coalition.

“I can’t predict that now. It will be a sea-change for me to have to change my mind to do something that I have not planned to do,” he said, adding that he could not rule out anything in life. “I am not ruling out or ruling in anything but my position is that I have retired from active politics,” he told Demerara Waves Online News.

Ramkarran made his position known after the coalition’s co-campaign manager, Raphael Trotman announced that the veteran lawyer was being courted to endorse the coalition of A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change
(APNU+AFC).

Speaking with Demerara Waves Online News, Ramkarran insisted that “I have retired from politics a little while back” after serving for more than 50 years and that he was “not persuadable.” “I am not interested in any political post…I have gone, I have left, I have retired.”

Asked specifically whether he would be backing the coalition, he said “I am not endorsing anybody. I write my own views in the papers. I am not involved in politics. I am not involved in endorsing anybody.” He could not say whether he would be endorsing APNU+AFC in his weekly column.

On the issue of whether he would be available to be Representative of the List or Speaker of the 65-member National Assembly, he said no one has approached him and there are many other possible candidates. 

Trotman told a news conference on Friday that he would prefer Ramkarran’s endorsement rather than being Representative of the List. ““Someone with the stature of Mr. Ramkarran could be part of the (Unity) Train and we see him adding much more potency than just being the Representative of the List,”