Rebuking Ram’s accusations, questions credibility of alternatives

Dear Editor,
Christopher Ram, an accountant who is also a lawyer and indulges, from time to time, in dabbling on the extremities of politics and letter writing to the press, wrote a letter published on 8th June, 2025, given pride of place, claiming that President Mohamed Ali has “diminished the Presidency” and “ought not to be re-elected”. Strong and accusatory words.
Mr Ram is, of course, entitled to his opinion, even though defaming, as he does, the character and performance of the President, and however misinformed, misguided and mistaken he is.
Mr Ram’s letter is burdened with presumption rather than fact, personal opinion instead of the truth and is based on Ram’s convenient interpretation of Mr. Azruddin Mohamed’s alleged WhatsApp messages accusing the President of facilitating “the undervaluation for customs purposes of a high-end vehicle” (a Lamborghini), in Mr. Ram’s words.
There is not a scintilla of evidence, but loads of speculation, that the President did any such thing, all of it based on accusations from the newly declared Presidential Candidate, Mr. Azruddin Mohamed.
What are the facts as we know them, shorn off speculation? Mr. Ram conveniently overlooks the fact that Mr Mohamed has admitted his own guilt of attempting to persuade the President to act improperly on his behalf. There is no evidence, because there is none, that the President did anything to satisfy Mr Mohamed’s appeal for his intervention.
The facts are that Mr Mohamed has been sanctioned, along with his father and his company, by the United States of America’s Treasury Department for the alleged massive evasion of taxes on gold exports to the tune of some G$10B at the expense of our government and the people of Guyana. The facts are that Mr. Mohamed has also been sanctioned for allegedly paying bribes to Guyanese government officials. The facts are that Mr Mohamed is now before the Courts for misrepresenting the value to the Guyana Revenue Authority of the Lamborghini and other fancy vehicles which he imported into the country.
Nevertheless, Mr. Ram prefers to believe and support claims made by an individual who has been accused by the US Government and is now before our own Courts accused of gross criminal behaviour.
I feel reasonably certain, knowing my friend (I don’t use that term sarcastically) Mr. Ram as I do, that Mr. Ram will respond to my letter, so, in advance, I ask him, whom would he choose at the forthcoming elections to be Guyana’s President, other than Mr. Mohamed? Would he choose, for instance, the confused Mr. Aubrey Norton, who has embraced the abject racism of Mr. David Hinds or, perhaps, the other Presidential Candidate, Mr. Nigel Hughes, who has disqualified himself by the fact that his Company, Hughes, Field and Stoby, represents ExxonMobil, an unforgivable and unacceptable conflict of interest for a Presidential Candidate? Or, perhaps, he would choose Mr. Mohamed?
I have another question for Mr. Ram. Does he really believe that President Mohamed Ali, as a favour to Mr. Azruddin Mohamed, would have picked up the phone and directed Mr. Godfrey Statia, Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority, to jeopardize his professional reputation by cheating on Mohamed’s tax declarations?
Mr. Ram’s letter, to a large extent, seems to be founded on a Stabroek News Editorial (Saturday, 7th June, 2025), arriving at much the same wholly irresponsible conclusions which he has echoed in his letter, that “on the face of what was presented by Mr. Mohamed about his contact with the President in September of 2020, there is certainly a case for President Ali to answer”. The Stabroek News appears to have arrived at this conclusion only based upon, it seems, that there once existed a long friendship founded on the shared Muslim faith between the President’s family and the Mohameds, about which there is no secret, and, therefore, somehow, that the President would be susceptible to the importuning of Mr. Mohamed, and nothing much else.
What the Stabroek News and Mr. Ram have chosen to ignore, is the fact that President Ali, in spite of that friendship and because he is the President, has properly ended that relationship.
Mr. G.H.K. Lall, well recognized for his entrenched hostility to all that is the PPP and the government, has gleefully joined the Stabroek News/Ram bandwagon and, in the Kaieteur News, (Tuesday, 10th June, 2025), published a fountain of verbiage and meaningless superfluous rhetoric, calling for the President’s resignation, devoting over some one thousand (1000) words, but not a single one of evidence, to support his hysteria. Why and how in the name of heaven does anyone read him, or does anyone?
This entirely malicious attack on President Ali has clearly been fueled by the very apparent political bias of the Stabroek News and the personal animosity of Mr. Ram. So, I have a final question to ask, not merely of Stabroek News and Ram, but the entire electorate?
Given that every declared contesting Presidential Candidate is not without fault of some sort, would they really prefer our country to be governed by a President who is criminally sanctioned by the US Government, or a President dedicated to taking our country down the black hole of racism and from a party which attempted to rig the last elections, or a President totally politically compromised by legal ties to Exxon and also a party associated with the rigging of the last elections, or a President of a governing party who, with all of his alleged foibles, has already, evidentially, led our country down the road of a massive development programme to the ultimate benefit of every one of our citizens? For these are the choices before us as voters on 1st September, 2025.

Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento