We must provide for our presidents, but not on this ridiculous scale

Sep 20, 2012 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Romel Roopnarine is distraught I am comparing Jagdeo’s pension earnings to those of American presidents like Barack Obama. Well, we have to compare in order to make the Guyanese people understand the magnitude of this heinous sense of entitlement and the venal usurpation at work here.
Obama will collect roughly US $127,000 after taxes on his pension. Roopnarine states Jagdeo will collect about US $72,000 in tax-free pension. Obama is president of a country with a GDP per capita of $49,000. Bharrat Jagdeo was the president of a dirt poor, corrupt, mismanaged, shell-shocked nation firmly in the grips of poverty and beggarliness that became even more corrupt, criminalized and beggarly under his watch.
Jagdeo’s Guyana has a GDP per capita of US$2,869. Obama will earn just 2.59 times the GDP per capita of the USA while Jagdeo will earn 25 times the GDP per capita of Guyana. It does not matter how much the GDP per capita has grown under Jagdeo, that does not allow him this absurd entitlement on the backs of taxpayers. The GDP per capita improved under Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and Desmond Hoyte, too, but the Jagans and Hoyte did not compensate themselves with a pension 25 times the GDP per capita of their countrymen. This is what sickens the Guyanese people to their very soul.
Roopnarine must know Guyanese have a right to compare what Jagdeo is receiving compared to the lowest paid workers or pensioners in Guyana. Jagdeo will get US$72,000 per year in pension. Pensioners in Guyana will collect US$600 per year. Barack Obama will earn US$127,000 after taxes per year in pension. The lowest paid Social Security pensioner in the USA will earn US$16,404 per year, which is 7.7 times below that of the US president. The highest paid pensioner will earn 5.7 times below the US president.
In Guyana, Jagdeo will earn 120 times the yearly earnings of a Guyanese pensioner. This is barefaced egregiousness. The Attorney General and Chancellor getting the same salary as the President is not a defence to the President’s usurpation. A handful of officers being compensated at ludicrous levels compared to the staggering poverty of the nation, is no excuse or justification, neither is outrageously fattening the Opposition Leader to earn complicity to the president’s barefaced bleeding of taxpayers with his prodigal pension package.
After all, this is a country with a GDP per capita of US$2,869. By no measure, the Chancellor, Attorney General and President should be earning US$82,285 per year, which is about 29 times the GDP per capita. No amount of jumbie-jackknifing of the truth could ever justify the Opposition Leader earning the salary of a Cabinet Minister who earns at least $500,000 per month or at least $6 million per year (US $30,000) and then getting benefits like a research assistant, an executive assistant/secretary, a clerical/office assistant, a chauffeur, a personal security officer, in addition to GPF security, a gardener and two domestic servants on top of that rip-off.
The fact that the PPP passed this legislation clearly signals it intended to appease the PNC Leader to sit quietly while the President pillaged this country even further with his pension package. This kind of avarice and this level of vile collusion between these two parties (PPP and PNC) is downright sickening. The AFC has to take off those blinders and stop playing the fool and blast not just Jagdeo’s pension package, but also the baneful salaries and benefits granted to the Opposition Leader, Chancellor, Attorney General and Ministers. These offices are not entitled to this kind of freeloading, not when this country is a verifiable cesspool. This back patting and scandalous cabalistic enrichment of each other on the backs of taxpayers does not occur in the USA, Canada, France, UK and Germany.
Why does Jagdeo need all these personnel – he will not be running the country in retirement or is he? Despite all these resources, the Opposition Leader has been lazy. APNU tabled a bill to amend Jagdeo’s benefits, but it impudently refuses to touch the travesty that is the Opposition Leader’s pension package.
If Roopnarine is going to quote published documents, he needs to shed his deceptive skin, because I always go to the source and read it myself. He mentions Bill Clinton’s entitlements amounting to US $1.162 million for 2008, but neglects to mention Jimmy Carter’s entitlements which are just above US $518,000. He fails to mention the US Former Presidents Act (FPA) amounts were budgeted amounts which may not have been used. He fails to mention these former presidents do exceptional work in a country that is 45 times the size of Guyana and also perform incredible work overseas, like Jimmy Carter who brought democracy back to Guyana.
Roopnarine fails to mention that Secret Service protection only lasts for 10 years for presidents after Clinton. Jagdeo will get security for life. Nor does he mention that presidential libraries are not funded by taxpayers but from funds raised by the Presidents. The debauchery here is not just the inflated pension to Jagdeo. It is the astounding unlimited benefits.
We have seen Jagdeo’s new palace at Pradoville II. That Taj Mahal will need a lot of electricity, staff, guards, gardeners and personnel. This pension package could get uglier for the Guyanese people as it could end up being another scheme of unchecked excess where an unending supply of workers and expenses cripple this country while Jagdeo in the prime of his life earns a good living. There are no limits in the wording of the legislation and that is dangerous in a country run by a government with no limits. Jagdeo’s entire pension and benefits package should cost Guyanese taxpayers at least US$250,000 per year. We must provide for our presidents and Jagdeo is certainly entitled but, by God, not on this ridiculous scale.
M. Maxwell

---

---