Dear Editor,
The adverse public reaction to news that the Minister of Finance is presenting a Bill to give a pension, benefits and other facilities to Hamilton Green that is set to cost the state some $16 million annually was expected. This is one of the most reprehensible and disrespectful acts of abuse of the treasury by the Granger administration, especially given the fact that the young people are still waiting for those jobs that were promised in 2015.
I once heard a comment in high political circles in 2011: “It is the pensions that will cost you the elections”. I have seen that these same kinds of pension contributed to a former government losing the elections. I have watched Guyana’s political development since 1992 and I can safely say that all the conditions are in place to support the prognosis that it is this same pension issue, like the Hamilton Green pension, that will cost the Granger administration the 2020 elections. It is time for rational minds like Raphael Trotman to step up and talk some sense into the political deadwood in the Granger administration which is hell bent on destroying what is left of that administration.
Hamilton Green at 82 years of age, has already earned millions of dollars of pay, pension and perks from the taxpayers for most of our independent years as a nation. He lives in one of the best compounds in South Georgetown that does not flood thanks to the steel revetment that surrounds his yard. If one is to reflect on the history of Guyana, one would recognize Mr Green as one of the principal architects of the stagnation of Guyana for most of its independent years.
So why are we going to pay millions of dollars to people who contributed to the retardation of Guyana and who are clearly undeserving of all these millions? He was a member of a government which produced electoral results which clearly did not represent the will of the people. In the 2015 elections, the PPP whose core base is rural East Indians and who were 39% of the population, got 202,694 votes. Contrast that with 1973, when the PPP core base was 51% of the population and they got only 92,374 votes.
If one reads the Stabroek News of October 6, 1992, Moses Nagamootoo was quoted as saying that bands “have Freedom House under siege” and the attacks were “planned, orchestrated and directed”. In those days the reporter who was reporting on some of this news was none other than the daughter of the sitting President, David Granger. So we cannot pretend to not know the facts unless we are playing the fool. We all saw the human firestorm, first hand, which included mass looting that targeted the business district including business houses like that of AH&L Kissoon (who supported and financed the PNC). But what is most disgraceful is that today the Granger administration, which includes Moses Nagamootoo has the audacity to want to foist upon the Guyanese taxpayer another geriatric payout of $16 million a year when we have not even created one tangible new investment or any mass waves of new jobs for the youths of Guyana.
Will Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, and Charandass Persaud be voting for this open act of plunder of the treasury?
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
