Category: Letters to the editor

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The tax exemption of the president’s pension package is an abomination

The defenders of the Former Presidents (Benefits and Other Facilities) Act 2009 including Prime Minister Sam Hinds, Dr. Roger Luncheon, Mr. Robert Persaud and now Dr. Nanda Gopaul are having a hard time trying to convince the Guyanese taxpayer that President Bharrat Jagdeo was less than greedy in initiating and approving legislation providing for benefits that are patently overgenerous.

The best that Mr. Persaud could do was question the timing of the questions, seemingly unaware that as far back as May 2009 Prime Minister Sam Hinds was vainly defending the Act with misrepresentations.

Mr. Hinds incorrectly wrote that all Mr. Jagdeo and his spouse would have is a single vehicle owned and maintained by the State. In fact Mr. Jagdeo is entitled to an unspecified number of such vehicles with drivers. In addition, Mr. Jagdeo is also entitled to duty-free concessions for motor vehicles and every other item he chooses to import. Mr. Hinds would also wish us to believe that free medical expenses are limited to the former president and his spouse. In fact taxpayers would have to pay for the medical costs for him and the dependent members of his family, for the rest of his life. And if Mr. Jagdeo or any one of them opts for treatment abroad, no big deal – the Act places no restriction.

Dr. Luncheon and others have been saying that all the Act did was to put into law payments made to former presidents, completely forgetting that neither Burnham nor Jagan lived to become former presidents.

With a slight twist Dr. Gopaul then tries to confuse the issue by listing eight types of expenses that former presidents were entitled to but fails to state what they actually received which is the real concern over the Act. What Dr. Gopaul seems to miss is what the parliamentary opposition and civil society have been saying all along, i.e. that there are no caps to any of the facilities; no conditions for receipt of benefits and no consideration of cost.

A former president working abroad is still entitled to tax-free pensions and most if not all the benefits and facilities permitted under the Act. And even if resident, s/he is entitled to clerical and technical staff even for private consultancy work, and can run up the most outrageous utilities bill for electricity, telephone and water to be paid for by the state. As drafted, the legislation would seem to impose on the state all the costs where the former president decides to have two or more residences. And we know from the advertisements, our soon-to-be former President is actually constructing on the sprawling state-owned land he awarded himself two houses and a distinctly un-low carbon hot and cold swimming pool for which the monthly electricity bill will easily run to $600,000. We will pay for all of that.

Even while visiting friends that individual likes to travel with an entourage often consisting of five vehicles and several staff providing security. If he is unwilling or unable to give up such show of power and influence, we the taxpayers will pay for them too, including overtime late into the night.

We may take some comfort in the two services that seem to be limited in number – the gardener, though even that could be circumvented by retaining a landscaping service, and an attendant. And if the soon-to-be former president joins one of his buddies in business or enters in business in name, either on his own account or for their benefit, all the income will be tax-free. This abomination has no parallel or precedent anywhere in the world and is deserving of its own Champion of the World Award.

The menu of benefits and facilities hardly seems what the Constitution intended as payments to former presidents when it states that “A person who has held the office of President shall receive such pension or, upon the expiration of his term of office, such gratuity as may be prescribed by Parliament. Any such pension or gratuity shall be a charge on the Consolidated Fund.”

One is forced to wonder whether the attempts by Hinds, Luncheon and others to confuse the public about the contents and consequences of the Act really show their inability to defend its inherent obscenity. What one does not have to wonder about is the frightening disregard for rules and cost on the one hand, and the interest of self on the other, which are symptomatic of how the PPP/C has been managing the financial resources of the country.

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Parties’ nominations lists should satisfy eligibility criteria for election to the Guyana Parliament

I am today sending to the Chief Elections Officer of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) the following letter in connection with the list of nominations which is to be presented to him for the November 28 national elections.

Mr. Gocool Boodhoo,
Chief Elections Officer,
Guyana Elections Commission
Main Street,
Georgetown

Dear Sir,

Eligibility criteria for election to the Guyana Parliament

I am writing to remind you of the following two Articles of the Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana relating to the eligibility for election to the National Assembly.

1. Article 53 – Qualifications for election as members states as follows:

‘Subject to Article 155 (which relates to allegiance, insanity, and other matters) a person shall be qualified for election as a member of the National Assembly if and shall not be so qualified unless he:

a) is a citizen of Guyana of the age of 18 or upwards; and
b) is able to speak, and unless incapacitated by blindness or other physical cause, to read the English language with a degree of proficiency sufficient to enable him to take an active part in the proceedings of the Assembly.’

2. Article 155 (1) of the Constitution states:

‘No person shall be qualified for election as a member of the National Assembly who is, by virtue of his own act, under any allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state.’

I am assuming that the Leader of each Party’s List of candidates for the national elections as well as you in your capacity as Chief Elections Officer are not unaware of the clear import and intent of these provisions and in particular Article 155 (1). It is my view that there is a serious obligation on your part to verify that the eligibility requirements are satisfied. You should be aware too that while there might have been breaches in the past, this cannot justify a continuation of an unconstitutional violation in such an important matter.

Finally, Sir, I consider it your duty to ensure that the elections are held in accordance with all laws and so thus prevent any challenge arising from the election to the National Assembly of any person who does not satisfy these eligibility criteria.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram

This is more than an academic matter. The constitutional provisions are intended to ensure that our legislators are loyal to Guyana and Guyana alone. A similar situation arose in Jamaica recently where politician Mr Daryl Vaz gave up his naturalized US citizenship in order to continue in Jamaican politics. That those who seek to make laws for the citizens of any country must be willing to submit themselves to those very laws at all times is almost superfluous to state.

The permissiveness that characterised previous parliaments has led us into the present state of non-governance and lawlessness. We must not allow the same mistakes again. The time to start holding our next batch of parliamentary representatives to account begins now.

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A mixture of distortions, untruths and misrepresentations

Under the theme ‘Working for a Better Tomorrow,’ the PPP/C Manifesto for the 2011 elections is a mix of distortions, untruths and misrepresentations, wishful thinking or no thinking at all. The two-page introduction, written by the presidential candidate Mr Donald Ramotar seems signally disconnected from the rest of the 43-page document.

Not content with the half-true contents of the Manifesto, Mr Jagdeo, the PPP/C’s presidential candidate for the past two elections showed that he still does not believe that truth is a virtue. His capacity for inventiveness, make-believe and contempt for the intelligence of his audience guaranteed that he authored the most astounding untruths of the Manifesto launch night when he told the audience that the PPP/C government had only just paid off a US$300 million loan for the PNC’s failed hydropower project!

Not only was it deception for the Manifesto to choose 1991 as its reference point when the PPP/C was in fact elected in the fourth quarter of 1992, but some of the selected information both then and now are fictitious and or fabricated. GPL line loss was not 50% in 1991 nor is it less than 30% now (page 13). GuySuCo does not produce 30 MW of bagasse power at Skeldon – a Wartsila diesel powered engine does – and the current external debt is not “approximately US$800 million” – unless for the economist Mr Ramotar and his economic team US$800 million and US$1,111 million are “approximately” the same!

The Manifesto boasts of the growth of the economy over the past nineteen years. It does not bother with the inconvenience that a substantial portion of the growth comes from the re-basing of the economy in 2009, an exercise which even a half-decent economist knows makes long-term comparisons meaningless. Of course it would have been too honest to expect the Manifesto to tell us that the exchange rate of the US Dollar has sunk 65% since 1992; or that the domestic debt has climbed from $18 billion in 1992 to $103 billion at June 30, 2011; or that the cost of electricity was $12 compared with $54 per KW currently; or that greenheart was $85 per board metre compared with $350 now.

Mr Jagdeo and now Mr Ramotar repeat ad nauseum that 96% of revenues were consumed in servicing debt “when they took over,” and it is now 4%. They should read the 1993 Budget Speech in which the first PPP/C Finance Minister Asgar Ally referred to “scheduled debt service obligation” and not actual debt servicing. And if they look at the 2010 revised figures, they will see that debt-servicing to revenue is not 4% but 13.3%.

What is also striking is that Mr Ramotar’s ‘vision’ for the next five years does not add a single new idea to the corruption-laden projects of Mr Jagdeo’s last term. So we have:

1. the expensive and untested Chinese laptops that will run us into billions;

2. the Amaila hydropower project which will earn us the award for the most expensive hydropower in the world, guaranteeing that electricity rates will remain prohibitively high;

3. the tourism hospital which Mr Jagdeo and his friend will import from India;

4. the Low Carbon Development Strategy that is neither low in carbon nor developmental in nature; and

5. the fibre-optic cable.

Mr Ramotar shows a dangerously limited understanding of democracy and the constitution when he promises local government elections within one year and “the strengthening of the local government ministry to oversee local government bodies.” The man seems blissfully unaware that that is the purview of the constitutionally required Local Government Com-mission which his party in government has refused to establish, and that Article 79 requiring Parliament to provide criteria for allocating resources to the regions has not been given effect to.

Despite our border problems with Chavez’s Venezuela and Bouterse’s Suriname, or the imperative to resile from Jagdeo’s excursions with Kuwait, Libya and Iran, Mr Ramotar does not think that foreign policy deserves a mention in 43 pages.

But he dreams that in five years he can transform an education system – known as much for a few exceptions like Ms Dev, as for its drop-outs and the creation of a functionally illiterate population – into one that is “world class and globally competitive.”

That race and race relations for the PPP are the imagination of a few aging malcontents is evident from the failure of the Manifesto to recognise those issues or to acknowledge the International Year for People of African Descent.

One wonders whether the leaders of the private sector in attendance, including Clinton Williams, Norman McLean, Ramesh Dookhoo and others, noticed that nowhere is the private sector or the manufacturing sector mentioned in the Manifesto. Good for them.

But labour too got no mention and one is left to wonder for how much longer the Jagdeo-Nadir $800 per day minimum wage will drive the pay policy of the PPP/C. No mention of the depressed communities or efforts to stamp out corruption or to integrate the corrupt elements in the informal economy into the tax-paying formal economy.

Governance too is treated by omission. And for a man who was nurtured in the ideologically obsessed Marxist PPP, Mr Ramotar’s Manifesto does not even mention the model of economic philosophy which his administration will pursue.

Whoever wrote the section of the Manifesto on Information and Communication Technology (page 22) must have been smoking something. How in Edghill’s heaven’s name can Guyana produce 25,000 high-quality jobs over the next five years in computer engineering and software development? Perhaps we will import them from India or China as we will do for our tourism hospital.

Women who make up 51% of the population, children, the elderly and the family get one page in the Manifesto at page 36, that includes a commitment to a comprehensive review of the NIS. The PPP/C’s mismanagement of the NIS under the chairmanship of Dr Roger Luncheon for the past nineteen years has placed the NIS at grave risk with outflows far exceeding inflows – three years earlier than the 2006 Seventh Actuarial Study had feared.

And youth who make up 46% of the voters share one page with sports and culture, although culture is noticeably missing in the plans for the next five years.

One can draw analogies from Alice in Wonderland or Aesop’s Fables, but perhaps the most appropriate assessment of the PPP/C manifesto was offered by their own former minister, Dr Henry Jeffrey, who told the nation on ‘Plain Talk’ last Sunday that he could not vote for the PPP/C on the basis of this Manifesto.

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A nonsensical analysis

The Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday, September 27, 2011, under a caption ‘Lies Exposed’ carries a statement in full by PPP Executive Committee member Mr Robert Persaud, “debunk[ing] recent statements issued by PNC’s APNU, et al on Guyana’s development.” Taking aim at former Finance Minister Mr Carl Greenidge, Mr Persaud said that Mr Greenidge “ignores the fact that in 2010, the Guyanese economy (at current prices) was more than fifteen times the size it was in 1991 when he was at the helm.”

Mr Persaud might very well be accused of engaging in some lies of his own. I assume he knows that there are two measures of the size of an economy – Gross Domestic Product and Purchas-ing Power Parity. Size ‘at current prices’ is not a meaningful concept, and GDP at current prices is not used by economists for making the type of long-term comparisons Mr Persaud undertakes. Real GDP would have been more appropriate, because it makes allowance for inflation which accounts for the bulk of the higher values we see. It seems that Mr Persaud engaged in some simplistic exercise creating a table comparing 1991 GDP with that of 2010 at current prices. In grade-three style, he then divided one into the other to arrive at the figure of 15! Surely there must be someone who could and should have told Mr Persaud that he was holding himself up to amusement since this is not even apples and oranges, but more like apples and chalk.

The politician in Mr Persaud probably wanted to suggest that the economy grew 15 fold (1500 per cent!) since the PPP/C came to power. That is absolutely and obviously nonsense, requiring an annual growth rate of 15.3%. In fact the average annual growth rate as reported by successive Ministers of Finance for the past eighteen years and disputed by other observers was 3.26%. Cumulatively then, in real terms the economy has grown by only 78.11% at best since 1992, hardly the kind of growth one expects from a resource-rich economy coming from a horribly low base (ie, it has not even doubled in close to 20 years).

The other point worth noting is the arbitrary date that Mr Persaud has chosen – 1991 – when we all know that Mr Greenidge was Finance Minister for a full three quarters in 1992. I suspect the reason for the choice of the year 1991 rather than 1992 is that it suits Mr Persaud’s purpose to project the PNC and Mr Greenidge in the worst possible light and thus show the PPP in the best possible circumstances, albeit false and contrived.

What Mr Persaud wanted to hide was the fact that in 1991 the economy grew – using the non-bogus yardstick real GDP – by 6.1% and in 1992 it was 7.7%, levels not achieved since Mr Bharrat Jagdeo became Finance Minister in 1995.

But Mr Persaud’s distortion goes to inflation as well. Mr Persaud refers to the inflation rate of 70% in 1991 without acknowledging that this was due almost entirely to a devaluation of the Guyana Dollar relative to the United States Dollar from G$45 to $101.75, more than 125%. The rate continued to decline in 1992 reaching G$125 to the US Dollar by October 1992 when Dr Jagan pledged to reduce it. It is now $204 to the US Dollar.

Mr Persaud also selectively relies on an IMF quote in 1988 – before the introduction of the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP). Is he not aware that on April 28, 1992 Mr Lewis Preston, the President of the World Bank, wrote the IDA Board of Directors in the following terms concerning Guyana: “Few countries have moved as far as Guyana in terms of implementing a comprehensive adjustment programme… and eliminated its arrears to international financial institutions.”

It is a sad testimony of the PPP and Mr Persaud that he would seek to ridicule Mr Greenidge for facing up to the truth about the state of the pre-ERP economy while he (Mr Persaud) can indulge in cheap distortions.

May I add that Mr Persaud might not know or wish to admit that before his administration signed on to the ERP, then President Hoyte invited Dr Cheddi Jagan as leader of the Opposition to attend a Cabinet meeting at which Dr Jagan grilled Mr Greenidge about the ERP.

Many Guyanese, including me, did not support the ERP either on ideological grounds, or because they did not think the ERP would succeed, or because of the programme’s immediate harsh social impact while its compensating ameliorative measures were slow in coming. But at least we have to credit the PNC and its finance team led by Mr Greenidge with courage, honesty and integrity, concepts that are largely alien in this era.

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WikiLeaks and Teixeira

The PPP leadership and indeed others are in a serious quandary over the WikiLeaks cables. These cables allow ordinary Guyanese a unique fly-on-the-wall view of the dangerous extent to which our state has become criminalized under the Jagdeo government while various officials and their friends have amassed considerable and inexplicable fortunes at the expense of the ordinary citizens.

These cables are not the product of amateurism or individual style. They are well structured, classified and sourced. Yet, following the publication in the media of a cable that revealed some collaboration between her and the US Embassy in Guyana, then Home Affairs Minister Gail Teixeira described its contents as “two-thirds” opinion without saying which third was factual. Her political boss refers to the cables as “impressions” while Dr Luncheon, reflecting his recent courtroom experiences refers to them as “hearsay.” Perhaps unable to grasp the significance of the revelations, presidential aspirant Donald Ramotar found them “slightly amusing.”

Let us examine a December 28, 2005 cable reporting on a meeting Ms Teixeira had with the US officials. It contains a Reference ID, date of creation, classification and origin, ie, the particular embassy. This is then followed by a summary which for the meeting Ms Teixeira had with the US officers on December 23, 2005 reads as follows:

“SUMMARY. Charge, Deputy Consul, and Pol. Off met with Minister of Home Affairs Gail Teixeira on December 23.

“Teixeira had requested a Consular briefing on trends in fake Guyanese civil documents detected by the Consular Section.

“Teixeira also described problems with control of the visa process in Guyana’s foreign missions… Teixeira also discussed voter registration problems that continue to dog the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) (septel). END SUMMARY.”

Here is a summary of the contents of the cable under the six captions identified therein.

1. No Control Over Birth, Marriage Registrations

Indicating that Ms Teixeira met with the US Embassy as recently as one month earlier, the first paragraph under the caption starts as follows: “Teixeira had asked Ambassador last month to send a Consular Officer to brief her on fraudulent birth and marriage certificates issued by the General Register Office (GRO) that had been detected by the Consular Section.”

2. Trying to Control Who Comes In and Who Stays Out

This caption begins with the following factual assertion: “Teixeira mentioned several suspicious visa cases on her plate.” The section also included the following direct quotes:

“a) However, she did suggest twice that her relationship with the Delhi Embassy was dictated by orders from higher authority.

“b) Teixeira said one of Guyana’s embassies and two honorary consuls in particular, are now her biggest problems on the visa front; and

“c) In Teixeira’s words, Guyana does not have an immigration policy. There is little control over visa issuance.”

3. Corruption Interferes Constantly

Under this caption Ms Teixeira is quoted as acknowledging there “was quite a lot of corruption in the immigration division,” and that a former advisor is “very closely linked to a number of networks, particularly the Chinese.” She is reported as describing “a slush fund financed by Brazilian fees for work permits that [two officials] had run. Unable to pin any direct evidence of illegal activity on [one of them], Teixeira said she had dealt with him by sending him on long-term leave.”

Ms Teixeira is further reported as stating that “while corruption also existed in the police force and GRO, the corruption of justices and magistrates was the most worrying. She said all Guyanese know which cases, magistrates, and lawyers are tainted by corruption. As a result, the government cannot win important convictions. Similarly, she said everyone knows who the ‘drug lawyers’ are, but the local bar association is too feeble to disbar anyone.”

4. Still Uneasy about American Religious Groups and Airstrips

This caption briefly addresses the Seventh Day Aviation medical group operating in Guyana and possible contamination of Amerindian communities by American religious groups.

5. Request for Assistance [by Ms. Teixeira]

The cable states that “Teixeira made two requests for assistance.” These were for 1) “computeriz[ing] the civil document process … and creat[ing] scanned archival copies of all old records” and 2) “auditing the GRO’s internal control procedures.”

6. Comments

In two closing paragraphs the cable expresses opinions including that “Teixeira criticizes her predecessor Gajraj’s imperious, direct control over the Ministry’s workings, [but] she has only slightly loosened the reins of control herself.” The cable ends with the unflattering but not unfair assessment that “more than a few Guyanese insiders think of her as a lightweight better suited to her previous position as Minister of Youth, Culture, and Sport.”

Not only does this cable debunk Ms Teixeira’s statement about two-thirds being “opinion” but it also raises the possibility of another extremely serious matter which she herself brooked with Stabroek News in an article on September 4. She said that she is “known for not disclosing internal party or government matters to outsiders.” Known to whom and in any case in one fell swoop, as evidenced by a single cable, she appears to have done quite a bit of disclosing.

While I am not surprised that under President Jagdeo’s dysfunctional administration the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was excluded from a request for foreign assistance, it is of concern that Ms Teixeira was not accompanied at the meeting by a representative from her ministry. Moreover, it requires some explanation that a minister of the government could be so friendly with a foreign state to which her boss was often openly antagonistic. Maybe Ms Teixeira considered her relationship with the US so special as to exclude them from her noble policy of “not disclosing internal party or government matters to outsiders.”