By Moses V. Nagamootoo
SINCE the expose by Finance Minister Winston Jordan that successive post-Jagan Cabinets had voted themselves hefty salary increases and my comments that grabbing the taxpayers’ purse was unconscionable, the Guyana Times has gone into over-drive to direct personal attacks on me.

The intent and gist of the attack are summarised in a letter that Times published on Thursday, February 2, 2017, under the caption: “Nagamootoo’s Cadillac lifestyle in a donkey-cart economy.”
That caption forms part of the propaganda frenzy that has been swirling at this broadsheet since the six-party APNU+AFC Coalition swept into power. Most of what is passed off as news, comments and opinions is tasteless, trash talk.

FALSE ALLEGATIONS
I usually ignore the vulgar diatribes, but would rebut false allegations such as that claiming that I have been granted “tax exemptions on unlimited vehicles” in addition to duty-free vehicles as an MP. It is now my turn to respond.
I am not aware that I have been granted duty-free concessions for “unlimited vehicles.” The stipulation granting exemptions for goods, including vehicles, bought by or for the President and Prime Minister has always existed, even under the PPP government! It appears that it was re-inserted or added to the Schedule of exempt goods, and not made recently, secretly, to benefit only the Prime Minister. This is what the Jagdeoite hordes are falsely and wickedly alleging.

WINDFALL BONUS
What I know for sure is that as an MP, I could have applied for duty-free concessions to buy for my personal use a new vehicle once every five years or a re-conditioned one, once every three years. But I bought only three (3) second-hand or used vehicles over the 20 years that I have served as Minister of Government and Member of Parliament, though I was entitled to buy, duty-free, 7 or 8 such vehicles.

I could have bought, then afterwards sold off the vehicles at the end of the stipulated period. Had I done that, I could have made for myself a windfall bonus of at least $15 million. But I resisted the idea of “unlimited vehicles” which was a vulgar recipe for unjust enrichment. It featured later in the President’s Pension Plan that was engineered by President Bharrat Jagdeo. I was a PPP/MP at that time and had to support the “cabinet decision” though, as I told the media then, that the pension benefits had rattled my soul. When the Coalition took office, the plan was gutted to exclude the uncapped “benefits” and unlimited vehicles for former President Jagdeo.

VOTE MISAPPROPRIATED
When I became Prime Minister, I was informed that $23 million had been allocated in 2014 for the purchase of an SUV for Prime Minister Samuel Hinds. At that time, vehicles from the old fleet were mal-functioning. Prime Minister Hinds would occasionally rent SUVs for hinterland trips. And, as I was to find out, the security escort cars would wobble as they climbed elevated routes such as the Hope Canal and the Berbice River Bridge. The VIP car in which I was travelling, broke down once at a traffic island in Kitty. A vehicle in the presidential convoy also suffered a similar paralysis.

But no new vehicle was bought for Mr Hinds, as the entire voted sum had been misappropriated, and used to buy vehicles for the then Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh.
OPM requested reinstatement of the hijacked sum in its 2015 budget. It was used to buy an SUV, an escort car and a motor cycle – all for less than $20 million. OPM returned the excess amount to the Treasury.

MINISTERIAL ENTITLEMENTS
As regards salaries, it is now well known, that in the post-Jagan period, ministerial entitlements had lost their “lean”, grassroots bearings. President Bharrat Jagdeo initiated self-help under which ministers were given 220%, and PPP/C Presidents grabbed 386.5% salary increases during 1998-2014.
During that period, public servants received 164.7% increases, mostly in 5% doses. A huge chunk from that was the 57% which was recommended for 1999-2000 by the Armstrong Arbitration Tribunal, which was grudgingly allowed after a costly and protracted strike.

I hate going back into past transgressions, but when I commented that those presidential and ministerial increases were outrageous and shameful, I only wanted to say that the PPP could not seriously challenge the salary position of the new government. How could these “champions of the poor” allow their President to jack up his monthly salary during 2006-2011 by almost 500%, increasing it from $223,.783 to $1,304,503?

In that period, the minimum wage of the “poor” public servants increased by 37% — from $26,069 to $35,657 monthly. But within eight months of our Coalition coming into office, the minimum wage for public servants went up from $42,000 to $55,000 – about the same percentage that it went up in five years under President Jagdeo.

GREED AND PERFIDY
The enormous love of the “poor” propelled the PPP administration to raise presidential pensions under the then notorious Former Presidents Pension Bill 2014. The formula that had become applicable resulted in Dr Jagdeo and other Presidents each getting a $1,591,.406 pension, monthly. This adds up to a whopping $54,482,616 annually for the Big Three.
I know that this “anti-nagamania” obsession will not go away any time soon, or ever. But for now, let the record state that I have never applied for nor benefitted from any tax remissions on “unlimited vehicles.”

Guyana Times cannot beat out the pension/salary/corruption curse that still hovers over the pro-Jagdeo PPP which tries to use me as a fig-leaf to cover acts of naked greed and political perfidy. The truth is that they helped themselves enormously, too much and for too long. So I won’t bother to ask why they did what they did. They have a canned answer: “We did it out of love for the poor!”
*The columnist, a journalist and author, is the Prime Minister of Guyana.