Benefits for elected officials and parliamentary matters should be addressed by parliamentary committees

Jan 16, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In response to Ms. Sonia Clarke’s missive, “Emile Mervin is on integrity collision,” (Kaieteur News, January 15), she identified six points I made in my three-part letter to Kaieteur News on January 9, 10 and 11, and then concluded with a ranting about the AFC, which I think would best be answered by the AFC, since I have endorsed the AFC but am not an active member, let alone an official spokesman.
First she wants me to list the dates of the President’s secret talks with the Opposition Leader to discuss parliamentary matters. Say what, Ms. Clarke? You can’t be serious! Why ask me to list dates when the newspapers carried stories of their meetings almost every time they said they met?
As recent as Tuesday, January 11, mere days after accusing the President of seeking three opinions on delaying this year’s elections and extending the Government’s time in office, Mr. Corbin showed up for a meeting with the President, to discuss ‘matters of mutual interests’.
Did they ever issue a joint statement to the public? Where are the news stories detailing matters discussed and agreements reached? Or were the talks focused on the two of them, per se? And this is not the first time!
Let me give Ms. Clarke an insight into why I often rage about their secret talks. According to a SN story, “Jagdeo, Corbin hold talks on local government elections,” (March 13, 2010), the two met and “discussed issues relating to upcoming local government elections. No official statement was made by either Office of the President (OP) or the Office of the Leader of the Opposition on the engagement, which surprised the other parliamentary opposition parties. Corbin, when contacted by SN last Friday, confirmed that there had been an engagement with President Jagdeo earlier in the week, where the issue of local government reform had been discussed.
“Corbin, while declining to term the engagement a “meeting,” stressed that this was the only matter raised during the discussions. He said that more details of the encounter will be disclosed shortly after the PNCR completes its consultations with various parties and bodies concerning local government reform. Office of the President, Press and Publicity officer Kwame McCoy, when contacted, also confirmed that there had been a meeting between Jagdeo and Corbin. He, however, said he was unaware what would have been raised when the two parties met.
“The engagement surprised representatives of the Alliance for Change (AFC) and GAP/ROAR. When contacted, AFC Leader Raphael Trotman said he had learnt about the meeting after it had occurred and he was not aware what had been discussed. Trotman said that if indeed the issue of local government elections was raised at the meeting with the President, it had nothing to do with Corbin’s constitutional duty as Opposition Leader.” Enough said!
Second, I never expressed outrage or disagreement with the House passing the Opposition Leader’s benefits bill. I expressed alarm that there was great secrecy surrounding the talks between the President and Opposition Leader, followed by negotiations between their emissaries, Luncheon and Corbin, to finalize a deal.
Furthermore, I joined in questioning how the Government could negotiate a benefits deal for the Opposition Leader, allowing it to exist in non-statutory form for almost five years before making it statutory, when there are other opposition members in Parliament who are not beneficiaries of such a deal.
How is this not pure selfishness on the part of the Opposition Leader? How can this not be seen as the President pacifying the Opposition Leader?
Third, the late Desmond Hoyte was right when he adverted to corruption in the PPP Government as ‘executive lawlessness’, but at least Hoyte was out there trying to achieve a couple of goals, even if his modus operandi often got hijacked and took a turn for the worse with violence and destruction against innocent people.
Today, the Opposition Leader has pretty much gone MIA, settling for secret talks with the President, while the Government has gone from ‘executive lawlessness’ to ‘all-out, in-your-face lawlessness’.
And it is this nonchalant attitudinal response from the Opposition Leader, which pretty much answers Ms. Clark’s fourth point about why the AFC doesn’t step up in place of the laid back PNC, which has strengthened the Government to press on in the face of charges of corruption and ‘bullyism’.
Any extra-parliamentary action by the AFC, therefore, would be seen as if it were the AFC fighting against the Government and PNC, for it is known that the Government or its party has teamed up with the PNC whenever it became politically convenient. And there is nothing both the Government and PNC would like to see than the AFC disappear.
However, though outnumbered and deliberately ignored by the PPP Government and PNC, the AFC, for a party that has been around a mere five years with meager resources, has had to resort to strategizing on how to combine its agenda with its elected responsibilities and pushed hard to highlight issues exposing the Government to the public.
Fifthly, the Government is indeed ramping up its efforts to have certain projects on stream before elections, and during the next few months it is likely to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars (that were never identified in the original budget) on all sorts of political-based or election-related projects.
And while I have blamed the PNC, as the main parliamentary opposition, for not doing more or anything of consequence to stop this madness with public funds, I will agree with
Ms. Clarke that the AFC could only have done more.
To the extent that the Government relies on foreign financial assistance for projects it likes to take political credit for successfully undertaking, it is to that degree that the collective parliamentary opposition needed to put together a corruption catalogue on the government and, together with concerned civic groups and prominent personalities, make a united presentation to foreign governments and international lending agencies to demand an end to government’s corruption before releasing any more developmental funds.
The international community does not recognise the AFC the way it does the PNC, having dealt with past PNC governments, so when the international community is aware of government corruption, but sees a docile and compliant opposition PNC, it thinks everything is okay and will continue to release funds to Guyana.
Then opposition politicians will blandly complain about corruption and the cycle continues.
Sixthly, I have already dealt with the issue of the Opposition Leader’s retirement benefits package, except to now say that while reference to this point in my three-part letter to Kaieteur News was not even the central point of my focus, it seemed to have attracted more attention than the fact that the President and the PNC/Opposition Leader could have met secretly to discuss benefits for the Opposition Leader.
Salaries and benefits for elected officials should be set by a parliamentary committee, and all parliamentary talks should be done by teams of parliamentary representatives instead of only any two people, to ensure transparency and accountability.
Emile Mervin
Queens , New York

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