Dear Editor,
PNCR and Opposition Leader Robert Corbin, who excoriated Mr Harry Gill and me for separate letters we wrote that addressed him, demanded I “produce evidence of the lucrative retirement package that I alleged has been prepared” for him, or shut up. Apparently, he and his supporters (B Beniprashad Rayman, a PNCR executive member) did not buy the reasoning in my letter, ‘It is time there was statutory coverage for the salaries, retirement benefits of ministers and parliamentarians’ (SN, January 13). So let me make it copiously clear that the clandestine way this deal was hatched, tells me that what we don’t see is often more important than what we see. So let’s keep watching!
Meanwhile, notice also how they eagerly demanded evidence from me, yet they all were deafeningly silent during the Jagdeo-Corbin secret talks that focused on benefits for the Opposition Leader, while the nation got the impression the talks were about issues more important to the people.
Without a doubt, the nature of our political culture allows some to demand evidence while hiding evidence, but especially evidence that can do political damage. For example, the government gets accused of corruption, the President asks for evidence, even though it stares at him in the news and nothing changes. The President accuses opposition politicians of cavorting with criminals and promises the nation evidence on a video. The opposition dares him, but then he baulks saying it might compromise the identity of the informant. Then the Opposition Leader goes public accusing the President of seeking out three opinions on extending government’s time in office by delaying elections, and I suspect it is true.
The President denies it and challenges the Opposition Leader to produce evidence. No one, including the accuser’s supporters, bothers to publicly demand he produces evidence on such a startling charge.
But next thing we are reading is that Mr. Corbin and the President are meeting for talks on matters of mutual interest and they even sit smiling broadly for a photo-op. Could this be the evidence of a third term bid, Mr Corbin?
Anyway, beside what I have explained in my January 13 letter, I will now add that if Mr Corbin still needs evidence of his retirement package then he should look closely at his existing benefits package, his age and his zero chance of ever being elected president. He obviously knows why he is not running as his party’s presidential candidate in this year’s scheduled elections, and unless he has secret plans to collaborate with the President, then his decision to remain as PNCR Leader should also be seen as a decision to retire into that position with his statutory benefits as his ‘early retirement benefits package.’ Enough said!
Now, given that his benefits package is statutory – including a salary equivalent to a cabinet minister, I want to challenge the Opposition Leader to list his achievements since assuming the post in December 2002. He is getting a cabinet minister’s salary to deliver results in our system of government, so I want him to specifically identify the bills he piloted into law in Parliament, the concessions he extracted from government for his constituents or funding he got from government for general projects his party identified.
As a fellow Lindener, say what he has achieved for his hometown or what he has done to address the complaints by Lindeners about the government ramming propaganda down their throats by controlling the only television station in Linden or what he’s done to get government to acquiesce to the court’s order in the case of Chapman and Yearwood versus the government to grant their request for independent radio licences.
Incidentally, we have been waiting for new broadcast legislation since 2001, the same way we have been waiting for over 15 years for new local government elections after Mr Corbin’s party struck a deal with the government to postpone these elections until local government reforms are executed.
And given the glaring financial irregularities in government, cronyism, nepotism, ‘bullyism,’ overpaid contracts, questionable disposition of state resources, the arrest of certain criminal suspects while other criminal suspects are walking freely, etc, let him say what he has done as the main parliamentary opposition leader to help arrest these negative developments. Where is his voice on the BCGI impasse?
I certainly didn’t agree with Desmond Hoyte’s post-’92 modus operandi, but at least Hoyte kept his promise that he would not be an Opposition Leader in name only when he led street demonstrations and protests for what he believed in, even though many of his constituents did not come out and support him.
Today, Hoyte’s successor is a virtual no-show against government in the face of government’s outrageous shenanigans that the newspapers keep highlighting. No wonder the President resorted to calling the newspapers the ‘new opposition,’ because they have been doing a far more effective job.
Editor, my constructive criticisms of Mr Corbin are no different from (though far less than) those I level at the President, and they are all in the context of their performance, or lack of, while executing their elected duties. But whereas the President has no known teenage political history that charts his rise to the presidency, Mr Corbin, on the other hand, was a well-known effective young foot soldier during the Burnham and Hoyte eras. But once he became the general, he became a political sap and incapable of rallying the troops against a political entity clearly seeking to position itself for long-term dominance.
Mr Corbin may think his critics are his enemies, but what his critics are saying of him is not a quarter as bad as what government is doing. So, the same way he wrote his impassioned letter defending his leadership and denying receiving a retirement package, he needs to be publicly impassioned about hot button issues, instead of being MIA against the government.
To his credit, he has successfully defended his hold on the party leadership post; yet it was precisely because of his poor leadership he was openly challenged twice, first by Team Alexander and then by Team Murray. To hang on to his ‘benefits’ at sixty-something, though, he will have to hang on to his post as Opposition Leader and not just his post as PNCR Leader. And now that we have a field of contenders seeking to become the PNC’s presidential candidate, it would be interesting to see how this will impact his hold on both positions.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
