From April 1, 2017, former PNC Prime Minister Hamilton Green is expected to start receiving almost $1.5 million a month in pension payments and other benefits after the government used its parliamentary majority last evening to pass a controversial bill to confer him with the package.
While Minister of Finance Winston Jordan, who piloted the bill through the National Assembly, called for principle to be separated from personality, the opposition PPP/C vehemently attacked the move as an unnecessary and repugnant example of cronyism.
Once the Prime Minister Hamilton Green Pension Bill is enacted, Green will be granted a pension for his tenure as Prime Minister, between 1985 and 1992, based on the salary of a current Prime Minister as well as the full benefits of a former President, a position which he never held.
The present PM Moses Nagamootoo receives $20,580,000 annually. His monthly salary is more than $1.7M and Green will be paid 7/8 of that sum.
Jordan, in commending the bill, noted that since its tabling last November, there had been several attacks on the character of Green, with criticism failing to focus on the merit of the bill itself.
“It generated a lot of heat and unnecessary controversy. Two of the most vociferous opponents of the bill were the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) and Transparency International Guyana Inc (TIGI), whose caustic and vitriolic remarks sought to attack Green’s personality rather than focus on the merits of the bill,” he said.
Both the GHRA and TIGI had called for the withdrawal of the bill. TIGI described it as vulgar, politically partisan and reeking of cronyism, while GHRA in a statement referred to the bill as “obnoxious.” The latter noted that if the bill is enacted, Green would receive an annual pension of $20,580,000, other benefits to the value of $3.1 million annually, two vehicles provided and maintained by the state and two first-class annual airfares provided by the state.
Jordan quoted former Minister of Education Henry Jeffrey, who in his weekly Stabroek News column, had said that as a matter of principle someone’s pension should not be encumbered “by all manner of emotionally subjective characterizations.”
Jordan maintained that principle must trump personality. “That is how it should and must be; nowhere in the constitution or any extant law does it state that any person’s pension may be denied if he or she is alleged to or has been accused of committing some wrong,” the minister told the House before going on to explain that the bill, which also provides for Green to receive all benefits provided for under the Former President (Benefits and Other Facilities) Act, seeks to correct an error.
He stressed that Green’s salary has for 25 years been erroneously calculated since he has been treated as a legislator with more than 12 years’ experience rather than Guyana’s Prime Minister.
The pension, which was pegged as two-thirds of the $32,124 Green earned in 1992 and has since been subject to annual increases, now stands at $165,000 a month.
Jordan stressed that the pension of former presidents Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and Samuel Hinds is currently more than $1,513,000, nine times more than Green’s. “It is not that he is not receiving a pension, it is that it is inadequate,” he stated.
He explained that the bill carries Green’s name because he is the only living former Prime Minister who is entitled to the payments as all other Prime Ministers will receive pensions under the former presidents Act.
Vulgar
The defence mounted by Jordan and fellow government ministers Keith Scott, Winston Felix, Valerie Patterson and Basil Williams, failed to convince the opposition.
Former Attorney-General Anil Nandlall, the first opposition speaker to take the floor, vigorously objected to the bill, which he labelled as discriminatory and a vulgar piece of political tokenism.
Nandlall argued that the special package brought to the House on Green’s behalf could not be called a pension since a pension is calculated based on the salary a person earned, while the bill seeks to pay a pension that bears no relationship to his salary.
“It cannot be a pension,” he repeatedly stressed, while arguing that if passed, the bill would discriminate against every other pensioner—an action prohibited by the Constitution, which nullifies any law that is discriminatory.
He maintained that any erroneous calculation could be corrected and a payment approved based on the salary earned by Green.
He noted that the bill, which grants a multimillion package, is being introduced at a time when government claims there is “no fiscal space” to support the sugar industry and the exemption of Value Added Tax from private school tuition.
“It defies logic, history and decency and is a slap in the face of all hardworking public servants, such as teachers and nurses,” he said, while labeling the bill a manifestation of political patronage.
Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira, speaking for fellow MP Priya Manickchand, who was absent at the time, stated that her side of the House would be willing to approve an ‘ex gratia’ one-off payment which would reflect the corrections Jordan noted in his presentation.
Teixeira delivered an impassioned plea for the withdrawal of the bill, which she labelled a vulgar attempt to reward the People’s National Congress (PNC) stalwart, who, like the prodigal son, she said, returned to the fold.
The GHRA had warned that a personalized bill to reward Green for a “lifetime of politics marked by incompetence and divisiveness” is provocative in the context of the current administration’s anti-corruption campaign.
It also said that Green’s political career reflects the attributes that have kept Guyana ethnically polarized, while noting that as “a young and ruthless politician in the early 1960s his name figured prominently in the violence from which this society has still to recover.”
It added that there was no justification for the bill beyond “cronyism” and noted that to date Green has “never apologized for the humiliation, hardship and violence to which the Guyanese people were subjected during his harrowing term of office.”
It said too that had late President Cheddi Jagan in 1992 “not ‘drawn a veil’ over the past in the interests of social peace, Green might have found himself facing the courts.
