It was a serious error to treat a special package for the AG as a benchmark

Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo appears to have intended to dismiss the public’s response to the 50% salary increase for Cabinet members in describing it [the response] as “comparable to beating a dead horse”, adding that “this rage has run its course”. (SN Oct 22 `Pay hike necessary to offset ministers’ loss of earnings. The latest evidence to the contrary is a letter by Mr Nowrang Persaud in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek (25-10-15) `Attorney General’s salary should have been red-circled’.

In his letter, Mr. Persaud refers to a report touching on the differential between the salary of the Attorney General and the rest of the Cabinet on the need some decades ago to ‘import’ a Guyanese legal luminary with unique competences. In his last week’s Stabroek News column on the subject of the increases, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran had identified the package offered by Prime Minister Burnham to Sir Shridath Ramphal. Mr. Ramphal was at the time working in a top law firm in Jamaica, and in his new position in Guyana would be designated responsibility for two disparate portfolios – Attorney General and Minister of State for External Affairs – with the additional task of drafting the emerging country’s Independence Constitution.

It seems from his writings that Mr. Ramphal did his best to discourage Mr. Burnham from employing him: he would only accept the position as a technocrat without party affiliation; was doing well financially in Jamaica with his family; if for any technical reason he had to sit in the Legislature, he wanted no vote and would not be subject to any party whip. But as he said, Forbes Burnham was not easily put off and agreed to all his conditions, presumably salary included.

While the assertion that Mr. Ramphal received a special package is correct, it is unlikely to be the source of the link between the salary of the AG and that of the Chancellor. There was no Office of Chancellor at the time in 1964. A senior PNCR member explained to me that the link came much later when Chancellor Keith Massiah accepted President Hoyte’s invitation to become Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs.

In both cases – and I do believe the comparable situation is Justice Mr. Massiah’s – the appointment and the link were unique. Accordingly, the link should have been discontinued a long time ago, and certainly by the Granger Administration which came in to office on a promise of change. The incumbent AG is an elected member, not a technocrat and not a former Chancellor, and would not otherwise qualify for any special package. In my view therefore it was a serious error to treat such a package as the benchmark against which the salaries of other Cabinet members should be adjusted.

Mr. Nagamootoo declares that “any numbers could have been agreed for me, for the Prime Minister and it would have been fine”. That is noble but it would have been more convincing to his Cabinet colleagues and the public if he had declined any increase for himself. Instead, it appears that it was the lawyers in the Cabinet, who are in a minority, who argued that since their previous incomes were higher than they were originally receiving as cabinet ministers, they were entitled to the substantial increases.

Clearly not all of the Cabinet members are lawyers or were otherwise engaged in employment earning hefty taxable income. But even if they were, are they any less willing to serve than Peter D’Aguiar who left his top job at the most successful public company at the time to become Finance Minister? Even as an avowed capitalist Mr. D’Aguiar placed country before self. He did not insist that his Ministerial salary must be comparable with his colleague Ramphal’s, or that he should receive compensation no less than what he was receiving as the Managing Director of Banks DIH Limited.

And while we focus on the 50%, let us not forget that the number of Ministers has been increased, partly by increasing the number of ministers in some ministries and partly by splitting ministries and reducing the workload of many of them. This is the case with the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Home Affairs, now separated into Citizenship and Public Security, and the Ministry of Commerce, Tourism and Industry now split into separate ministries of Business and Tourism. Effectively then, while the increase on the salaries is 50% for Cabinet Members, the overall cost to the country is much greater, particularly when all the perks, some of questionable lawfulness, such as the tax free salary for the AG and maid and gardener allowances are taken into account.

Now that a leader of the AFC has expressed a position, the most saddening part of the episode for me is the eloquent silence of the leadership of the Working People’s Alliance. It is a party with a deserved reputation for speaking out on issues of political morality, conflicts of interest, misuse of power and fairness to and for the working class. While it was with some relief that I learnt that the Executive of the party is unhappy with the decision by Cabinet, if they want to restore the party’s reputation, they will have to do more than bear their unhappiness in silence.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram