Ramjattan wanted to be Attorney General

…but “got what we deserve”

Founding Member and recently elected leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan has disclosed that after his party in coalition with the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) won the 2015 elections, he wanted the position of Attorney General (AG).

However, during a live radio programme last week, Ramjattan said he had to step aside since Basil Williams, a member of People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R), also wanted the position. The PNC/R is the largest party in the five-party APNU, which holds the majority in the coalition Government.
“My first choice was Attorney General… [But] Basil Williams was also interested in that and we had to opt for the next and that was security,” Ramjattan stated.
Over the years, AG Williams, who is also the Legal Affairs Minister, has been heavily criticised for the State losing a lot of cases under his watch. However, both he and President David Granger has defended his performance.
Ramjattan, nevertheless, noted that his expertise in the criminal law area was better put to use as Public Security Minister. He further posited that his party, the AFC, got what it deserved after coalescing with the APNU in February 2015 to successfully contest the 2015 General and Regional Elections.
“We deserved what we got and it was because of the APNU side also appreciating what we deserved. They deserved what they got too. If we gonna fight over the little that some people feel that we got more and so on, it’s not gonna take us any place. And so, it is important that when you form a coalition and worked out a partnership agreement, you do not go crying all about the place that we should’ve gotten instead of 12 seats, 14 or we should’ve gotten more than eight Ministers and things like that. And similarly, the other side shouldn’t be saying things like ‘oh, they should’ve only gotten five and so on’. It worked out successfully because we managed to win the elections by a very slim majority. Had we not done the agreement, certainly Donald Ramotar would’ve been there up to now,” Ramjattan posited.
At the AFC’s National Executive Conference (NEC) earlier this month, Ramjattan was not only elected the party’s leader but also secured backings to be its Prime Ministerial Candidate at the upcoming elections – ousting current Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo.
In accordance with the 2015 Cummingsburg Accord, signed between the two parties, AFC will have the Prime Ministerial position while the Presidential post goes to APNU.
The Accord has a lifespan of a minimum of three years and maximum of five years and was focused primarily on the General and Regional Elections. However, the AFC back in 2017 was pushing to have the ‘deal’ reviewed and revised, and had even set up a committee to lead those talks which never panned out.
But the APNU’s point man for the negotiation of the Accord, Carl Greenidge, had stated last November that there were no immediate plans to modify the agreement since it has been working well.
In fact, after a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting back in January, the minority party in the coalition Administration also reiterated its commitment to the coalescing pact. But this is despite the AFC in recent years coming under fire for the submissive role it has been playing since joining forces with the APNU.
This led to the minority party contesting the November 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE) on its own. The AFC then contended that it is still a force to be reckoned with after garnering between four and 10 per cent of the popular votes.