The Hamilton Green pension is scandalous

Nov 23, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The adverse public reaction to news that the Minister of Finance has presented a bill to give a pension, benefits and other facilities to Hamilton Green that is set to cost the state some G$ 20 million annually was expected. This is one of the most reprehensible and disrespectful acts of financial abuse of the Treasury by the Granger administration, especially aware of the fact that the young people are still waiting for those jobs that were promised in 2015. I once heard a comment in high political circles in 2011, “it is the pensions that will cost you the elections”. I have seen these same pensions contributed to a former government losing the elections. We all know what will be next.
I have watched Guyana’s political development since 1992 and I can safely say all the conditions are in place to support the prognosis that it is these same pensions, like the Hamilton Green pension, that will cost the Granger administration, the 2020 elections. It is time for the rational minds like Raphael Trotman to step-up and talk some sense into these political deadwoods in the Granger administration who are hell bent on destroying what is left of the Granger administration.
Hamilton Green at 82 years of age has already earned tens of millions of dollars of pay, pension and perks from the taxpayers for most of our independent years as a nation. He lives in one of the most posh compounds in South Georgetown that can never flood thanks to steel revetment that surrounds his yard. Were those steel revetment not the basis for Eusi Kwayana taking Minister Green to the Ombusdman? Who was the Minister of Public Works and Hydraulics in those days? You guessed correct – Hammie Green. So if one is to reflect on the history of Guyana, they will recognize Hammie as one of the principal architects behind the stagnation of Guyana for most of its independent years.
So why are we continuing to pay millions of dollars to people who contributed to the retardation of Guyana and who are clearly undeserving of all these millions? This situation is like Uganda telling Idi Amin that he is most deserving of a pension. I am therefore writing this letter, specifically for those under 35 years, who may not know of the bad deeds of Guyana’s version of a little dictator.
There is enough evidence to illustrate the role he, as Minister of National Mobilization played in creating some electoral results in Guyana that clearly did not represent the will of the people. As the active Minister of National Mobilization, he was influential in the manufacturing of the elections results of those crooked 1973 elections which produced results as follows – PNC – 243,803 vs. PPP 92,374 votes.
In the 2015 elections, the PPP (whose core base is rural East Indians – 39% of the population), got 202,694 votes. Contrast that with 1973, when the PPP core base was 51% of the population and that party only got 92,374 votes. There is a reason for this statistical abnormality and it is called the Ministry of National Mobilization. So today we are paying out a pension that will cost the taxpayers some G$20 million to the intellectual authors behind the denial of freedom for the Guyanese people in 1973 and several other elections.
Secondly, I was an active participant in the 1992 elections and saw with my own eyes those who were directing the show when the “marauding bands of thugs attempted to carve a swathe of terror” around the city. I saw with my own eyes, people being told to use a pickaxe to dig up the roads so that the bricks can be used to “stone down” the Elections Commission on Croal Street.
If one reads the Stabroek News of October 6th, 1992, Moses Nagamootoo was quoted as saying that these marauding bands of thugs “have Freedom House under siege” and the attacks were “planned, orchestrated and directed”. In those days the reporter who was reporting on some of this news was none other than the daughter of the sitting President, David Granger. So we cannot pretend to not know the facts unless we are playing the fools.
But what is most disgraceful is that today the Granger administration, which includes this same Moses Nagamootoo has the audacity to want to foist upon the Guyanese taxpayers another geriatric payout that will reward a favoured comrade some G$20 million a year for the rest of his life when we have not even created one new tangible investment or any mass waves of new jobs for the youths of Guyana. Will Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, and Charandass Persaud be voting for this open act of financial raid of the Treasury to reward Guyana’s biggest bad boy? Something is really rotten in the STATE OF GUYANA.
Sasenarine Singh

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