Cheddi Jagan won power younger than Jagdeo and he acquired no wealth in office

Sep 06, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The problem with the debate on Jagdeo’s pension and his massive accumulation of wealth while in power is not the truth, which every Guyanese knows. It is the lapdogs who have no integrity and decency and are so blinded by the pettings of their master they cannot stand up for themselves and tell the bloody truth.
It is the miasma the PPP has become where men with no soul are going on public television and singing for their master like mindless poodles.
We have heard all kinds of defences by these worshippers. Some are so crassly ignorant and deliberately deceptive, they don’t even pretend it is logic.
Anil Nandlall reportedly said: “The difference between Mr. Jagdeo and every other President in this country is that he took power in his 30’s.
He didn’t own anything, he came back from studies, he worked and he acquired as he was working.
He was the only President that is distinguished in that respect.” Absolute swill. Complete hogwash. Utter trash.
Cheddi Jagan was Premier of Guyana in 1953 at age 32. He became Premier again at age 37 in 1957. Cheddi Jagan didn’t own anything when he got into power. He had just returned to Guyana a few years earlier and spent most of his time fighting for freedom of the Guyanese people rather than making money from his dentistry practice. Cheddi was a dentist.
He ran his own business, unlike Jagdeo, who returned to Guyana in October 1990 and who right away, despite his affiliation to the PPP, secured a quality position as a state planning economist under Desmond Hoyte and Carl Greenidge.
From there, Jagdeo kept getting promoted by virtue of political patronage to ever higher positions where he earned more pay than 90% of this country. Cheddi Jagan never earned anything from politics and government. Unlike Jagdeo, Jagan had a family to care for.
Despite these economic challenges, Cheddi’s personal record of work in the trenches, backdams and canefields of this country dwarfs the work of the entire lazy, arrogant and elitist PPP since 1999.
Cheddi Jagan did not own anything when he came to power in the 1950s. He owned just a home and probably modest savings when he became President in 1992. He arrived in the office of the presidency with nothing. He took nothing as his pay was laughable compared to what Jagdeo paid himself. He left with nothing and he asked for nothing.
Cheddi Jagan’s own son wrote that Cheddi Jagan was homeless and broke when the PPP lost power in 1964.
This is a man who founded the party of these vagabonds now defending pillage and outright usurpation of this nation’s resources by handing outlandish pensions to their master.
Desmond Hoyte came to power with nothing and left with nothing. Janet Jagan came to power with nothing and left with nothing.
Forbes Burnham took heavily during his rule but he used it during his rule.
Even that tyrant Forbes Burnham was not this tyrannical in his sense of entitlement as Jagdeo who has his minions defending this absurd pension.
That these PPP henchmen would be running around this country barking like rice eaters while their master sits in the plantation house pulling and tugging the leash reminds us of who is really the power and who is really the masquerader prancing around with the costume.
‘Massa’ days are not done with the PPP. Men singing like sparrows for ‘Massa’ on the big tube reminds us that ‘Massa’ days are still alive and well in the PPP.
I’ll tell you this, Forbes Burnham would be proud. He is probably telling Cheddi right now how ‘Massa’ remind him of him back in his heydays from 1964 to 1985 and why did PPP supporters reject him then when they are allowing themselves to be battered by Massa now?
Cheddi Jagan ruled Guyana for one year in 1953, then from 1957 to 1964 for 7 years then from 1992 to 1997 for 5 years. In 13 years, Cheddi Jagan acquired nothing in office. In 12 years, three months, if Jagdeo got $1M per month, he would have earned $147 million tax free.
If Barack Obama, Chancellor Merkel, PM Persad-Bissessar, Stephen Harper, Portia Simpson-Miller or David Cameron ever built a house for X and sold it for five or six times that price to a diplomat directly under and answerable to any of them when that sale price was clearly above fair market value, there would be a Parliamentary investigation and possibly more.
If Jagdeo did not own a property when he came to the presidency and despite serving as advisor and finance minister for several years, where was he living?
Was he renting or was he living in accommodation paid for by the state? Did Jagdeo buy and sell any properties between 1990 and 1999 when he became president? What does Jagdeo not owing a property have to do with his entitlement to a bizarre pension package?
If a man is earning more than 95% of the rest of the population since 1993 as Junior Finance Minister and he chooses not to buy a property, it does not mean he is not financially capable of buying a house.
How does a man who has been a minister of government for six years before he became President earning income at the highest brackets in Guyana secure a houselot for $58,000 at Pradoville 1 and land at Pradoville 2 at $5 million per acre?
Cheddi Jagan ruled this country for 13 years during times when Guyana was no backwater but one of the top fifty richest countries in the world. Cheddi Jagan did not become rich in office.
Cheddi Jagan never had his minions running around like headless chickens fighting for his ability to rape this destitute land.
Debauched power had not only rotted the minds of the yes-men and sycophants, it has rotted their sense of truth and history.
M. Maxwell

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