EXCERPTS OF MOSES V. NAGAMOOTOO, (Vice Chairman of the AFC) SPEECH IN PARLIAMENT ON January 25th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded today of the famous remarks made by John F Kennedy,
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Today, I find it indefensible that anyone should try (even try) to advocate that, someone who by choice and subterfuge could have been President of this country. Today they now ask as a primary consideration that the contribution be recognized in monetary terms as well as monetary benefits.
Public life is a duty and the calling to duty is altruistic; it is the job of the philanthropist, the do gooder, the people who would want to leave, in what one writer said “the foot prints in the sand of time”. The goodness they have done towards fellow man and not how much purse they would take after they would have left office.
This Bill rightly so, and I agree for one moment with the Honorable Finance Minister, seems to be serving a controversial agenda.
So much so that the controversy when put before the Guyanese people in 2011, they were able to handle that controversy in a way that put shame to those who want to canvass the defense for the indefensible.
For some sections, and now I speak directly to those over there, that I know the genesis of this piece of 2009 legislation.
Even if we have people over there who are committed to speak with veracity, the most note the opposition I had raised to this piece of legislation being introduced that would give uncapped benefits to a former President. When I said my soul rattled!
They would not have faced the predicament they faced with the Guyanese people in the last elections if they had heeded my warning that you the PPP are assaulting the conscious of the people who put you into office from which you seek to have rewards.
And I had said then, when this issue came on board, that we should all remember the extortion of HO CHI MIN, who taught us revolutionary morality. The first and foremost in the revolutionary morality that we imbibe was that salary, perks and privilege were not going to be our main motivation for serving the people.
Today, we stand here and we hear people in violation of those same exhortations. Thing that meant so much to our upbringing and our political conviction try to argue that in a country as poor as Guyana, in a country where so many people are below the poverty line, we are here trying to convert the PPP into Pensions, Perks and Privileges.
The working people in this country will frown upon this degradation of what they once hold as an institution that once served their interest. Now they realize that the interest has been personalized and what matter in the PPP today is the idolization of individuals rather than service to people.
We find mischief that this Bill today seek to correct. People must be placed before personalities.
We shall reject the temptation that we become political parasites that will feed upon the misery of our people, many of whom cannot eke out a decent livelihood and cannot live on what they earn.
We heard the solicitous lamentation by the Hon Minister Irfan Ali that if you give $5,000 as an allowance to a former president for telephone and electricity, and water that seems to be outrageous.
We were told that this was such a horrendous thing that a former president who gets $1.2 million per month in pension (no one is touching this pension, this is the distinction here) will seek an advantage over a pensioner who have been given the miserly sum of $10,000 a month.
And assuming the pensioner pays $5,000 a month in utility bills, he is left with $5,000 to pay rent, pay transportation and to find food most of all. Food for $5,000 a month!
And today we came with this outrageous protestation that someone already earning $1.2 million a month would probably die, his dignity will be stolen if you did not give him $5,000 month and more as benefits on top of his $1.2 million.
So dignity is weighed in terms of money, quantum of money.
But dignity is also weighed in relation to the multitude of suffering people are subjected to in their lives, who cannot have this kind of money, .
That is when we steal their dignity by not GIVING pensioners more money, not giving teachers more money, not giving nurse more money; or policemen in uniform.
That is when we assault their dignity because when you take the little that they have what have you left them with?
Their self-esteem is gone!
You condemn them to beggary, to prostitution, to be mendicants eating out of the barrels in the pavements.
Aren't we thinking how we are marginalizing our people and placing them in the margin of the poor and the deprived?
Today we are looking here to defend the perks that we gave to our former President.
THE VOTE
Someone reminded me on the last occasion that I voted for this obnoxious piece of legislation. At Freedom House as a leader of that party then, I asked for a conscious vote and I was told that once a cabinet takes a decision on an issue, THERE SHALL BE NO CHANGE TO IT.
You ask those who sat over there, who were in the meeting whether this was true or false. SHAME!
The party and their members there will attest how they felt on this issue who might not have been able to express with the same strength and conviction when I spoke on this issue. I had told the press immediately after the vote that my soul rattled and I was not allowed a conscience vote on the issue and everyone knew that this 2009 bill was offensive to the working people.
Mr. Speaker, this issue as I said is not about the pension, the Constitution in article 181 provides for Presidential Pension and such gratuity as is provided by Parliament. I understand the constitution to say a certain sum of money. It was never meant to provide UN-CAPPED PERKS to go with the Pension.
I say this 2009 legislation may very well have collided with the Constitution and the obscene haste with which it was run through the parliament in 2009 might have meant that there was a personality agenda to be satisfied and not necessarily the obedience of the Constitution.
And even if I am wrong, in my interpretation, I would still have as I said in the 2011 campaign trail, that if we became the Government we will repeal the entire Act since once you are entitled to pension, that is enough.
Dr Jagan always said when you have a donkey kart economy, you cannot live a Mercedes or Cadillac style living.
No one is denying a former president a pension.
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded today of the famous remarks made by John F Kennedy,
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Today, I find it indefensible that anyone should try (even try) to advocate that, someone who by choice and subterfuge could have been President of this country. Today they now ask as a primary consideration that the contribution be recognized in monetary terms as well as monetary benefits.
Public life is a duty and the calling to duty is altruistic; it is the job of the philanthropist, the do gooder, the people who would want to leave, in what one writer said “the foot prints in the sand of time”. The goodness they have done towards fellow man and not how much purse they would take after they would have left office.
This Bill rightly so, and I agree for one moment with the Honorable Finance Minister, seems to be serving a controversial agenda.
So much so that the controversy when put before the Guyanese people in 2011, they were able to handle that controversy in a way that put shame to those who want to canvass the defense for the indefensible.
For some sections, and now I speak directly to those over there, that I know the genesis of this piece of 2009 legislation.
Even if we have people over there who are committed to speak with veracity, the most note the opposition I had raised to this piece of legislation being introduced that would give uncapped benefits to a former President. When I said my soul rattled!
They would not have faced the predicament they faced with the Guyanese people in the last elections if they had heeded my warning that you the PPP are assaulting the conscious of the people who put you into office from which you seek to have rewards.
And I had said then, when this issue came on board, that we should all remember the extortion of HO CHI MIN, who taught us revolutionary morality. The first and foremost in the revolutionary morality that we imbibe was that salary, perks and privilege were not going to be our main motivation for serving the people.
Today, we stand here and we hear people in violation of those same exhortations. Thing that meant so much to our upbringing and our political conviction try to argue that in a country as poor as Guyana, in a country where so many people are below the poverty line, we are here trying to convert the PPP into Pensions, Perks and Privileges.
The working people in this country will frown upon this degradation of what they once hold as an institution that once served their interest. Now they realize that the interest has been personalized and what matter in the PPP today is the idolization of individuals rather than service to people.
We find mischief that this Bill today seek to correct. People must be placed before personalities.
We shall reject the temptation that we become political parasites that will feed upon the misery of our people, many of whom cannot eke out a decent livelihood and cannot live on what they earn.
We heard the solicitous lamentation by the Hon Minister Irfan Ali that if you give $5,000 as an allowance to a former president for telephone and electricity, and water that seems to be outrageous.
We were told that this was such a horrendous thing that a former president who gets $1.2 million per month in pension (no one is touching this pension, this is the distinction here) will seek an advantage over a pensioner who have been given the miserly sum of $10,000 a month.
And assuming the pensioner pays $5,000 a month in utility bills, he is left with $5,000 to pay rent, pay transportation and to find food most of all. Food for $5,000 a month!
And today we came with this outrageous protestation that someone already earning $1.2 million a month would probably die, his dignity will be stolen if you did not give him $5,000 month and more as benefits on top of his $1.2 million.
So dignity is weighed in terms of money, quantum of money.
But dignity is also weighed in relation to the multitude of suffering people are subjected to in their lives, who cannot have this kind of money, .
That is when we steal their dignity by not GIVING pensioners more money, not giving teachers more money, not giving nurse more money; or policemen in uniform.
That is when we assault their dignity because when you take the little that they have what have you left them with?
Their self-esteem is gone!
You condemn them to beggary, to prostitution, to be mendicants eating out of the barrels in the pavements.
Aren't we thinking how we are marginalizing our people and placing them in the margin of the poor and the deprived?
Today we are looking here to defend the perks that we gave to our former President.
THE VOTE
Someone reminded me on the last occasion that I voted for this obnoxious piece of legislation. At Freedom House as a leader of that party then, I asked for a conscious vote and I was told that once a cabinet takes a decision on an issue, THERE SHALL BE NO CHANGE TO IT.
You ask those who sat over there, who were in the meeting whether this was true or false. SHAME!
The party and their members there will attest how they felt on this issue who might not have been able to express with the same strength and conviction when I spoke on this issue. I had told the press immediately after the vote that my soul rattled and I was not allowed a conscience vote on the issue and everyone knew that this 2009 bill was offensive to the working people.
Mr. Speaker, this issue as I said is not about the pension, the Constitution in article 181 provides for Presidential Pension and such gratuity as is provided by Parliament. I understand the constitution to say a certain sum of money. It was never meant to provide UN-CAPPED PERKS to go with the Pension.
I say this 2009 legislation may very well have collided with the Constitution and the obscene haste with which it was run through the parliament in 2009 might have meant that there was a personality agenda to be satisfied and not necessarily the obedience of the Constitution.
And even if I am wrong, in my interpretation, I would still have as I said in the 2011 campaign trail, that if we became the Government we will repeal the entire Act since once you are entitled to pension, that is enough.
Dr Jagan always said when you have a donkey kart economy, you cannot live a Mercedes or Cadillac style living.
No one is denying a former president a pension.
