Dear Editor,
I read with disbelief the government’s latest trailblazing action in the news report titled, ‘Bill seeks “high office” pension for former PM Green’ (SN, November 16). Once again, this supposedly groundbreaking administration has gone out of its way to demonstrate how it is so much like the old one. The new seems to excel through pursuing situations that redound to its aggregating discredit and untold embarrassment. It does so with near total disregard for a largely struggling suffering populace, inclusive of its very own.
When it held the reins, the PPP was pleased and proud to give its leader a golden parachute and a golden tarmac on which to land, through a golden goodbye. This was executed even as it was hoped that this rich goodbye would be temporary. It is called a pension. In the meantime, multitudes of that same political party’s supporters eke out (repeat, eke out) a bare subsistence existence through cast-nets, kitchen gardens, odd jobs, and barrels when such come. But as this nation is learning, high office means high rewards for the high inhabitants.
Now along rushes the PNC (call it APNU or APNU+AFC or whatever pleases) to honour one of its own by engaging in a like extravagance, through tabling this repugnance in the revelation of this utterly disagreeable development. Since this die is now in the public domain, I say do more for the intended recipient. Give him his full due by arranging gratuities and annuities for each of his prior responsibilities as former minister(s), former vice-president, former prime minister, and former mayor, among other positions. Clearly, this local man of many seasons and many stalwart endeavours (some still speculative and unidentified) is deserving of limitless financial consideration by virtue of his illustrious contributions to the greatness of this nation.
In this latest sordid imitation of the previous government, I wholeheartedly recommend much more than is now contemplated for this longstanding emperor of the political gerontocracy. Do so and cheat the real workers.
Most obviously, this new government is shameless and contemptuous of citizens. For here it is that public servants and teachers (supporters all) are forced to complete all nine prostrations associated with kowtowing in a dragged out industrial relations process for a mere pittance due, and getting the finger in the eye and elsewhere. And all of this occurs while plans to take good care of one of the original immortals in gaudy fashion are already a near done deal. If this is not just like the PPP, then somebody should tell me what is.
That was how I assessed the PPP’s excesses for the benefit of its leading light; this is how I stand on this newest abomination, so indicative of aberrational thinking, on the part of the PNC. Surely this government has a host of other pressing priories in which to engage and all more constructive and less controversial.
Now I would be the last to take bread from anyone, but I believe that the intended beneficiary is better positioned to give me bread and many hungry ones to boot, including a mass of well-wishers.
Editor, there are many Guyanese who fear the coming of each new day, and the call for two (not three) square meals; it is that rough. The weekly minibus expense requires a gargantuan effort; there are still other gritty realities that bring soaring anxieties. And amidst all of these known hardscrabble circumstances of the people, there is this continuing insistence on the part of a caring government to construct towering financial fortresses for the members of the local House of Lords, so that they can live high. I submit that they are already high: high on power, high on position, high on pesos, and high on pickings. But they still have to get more, be given more, and live even higher, while the unlettered unfortunates manage on their own.
This government keeps on digging holes; time will tell how many and how deep. As for me, I recognize once again the chronic, arguably terminal, illness of this society. I must distance myself from it.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
