Coil: Fools for Democracy

by Vidyaratha Kissoon 

“Do you want to see my riches? Let me show you – one of my riches just walked past here… he is a doctor now.. he has a disability,” the woman who has been teaching for over 20 years told me after I asked her if she could do with a million dollars a month salary.

“No, we don’t want to make this a money thing because you will only get people who coming for the money and not to teach/”

President Granger confirmed on Friday, that yes, the taxpayers have to bear up since this difficult decision was  “ an investment in quality governance “ .

Did the Ministers say to the President dat de Minister wuk cyan pay and dat he gotta stump up?
While President Granger had to deal with President Maduro at the border, did President Granger have to make a difficult decision to increase the salaries of the people who teking less money and who were going to bail on him.  Are those the options he faced?

While capitalist talk about investment might sound nice, every capitalist knows that there have to be returns on investment and up to now we are not so sure what and when this investment will pay returns.

What is the business plan for Guyana?

I mean, how long before NCN and Chronicle become high quality State Media so as to justify PM Nagamootoo’s million dollar increases? How long before teachers stop beating chirren in Guyana’s schools and every child about to leave primary school could read the Constitution to justify Dr Roopnaraine’s increases?

So while the teacher has taken her low salary and is confident in her investment seeing the future doctors and other citizens in her young charges, what exactly are we to expect from the millions invested in the former private sector and other gurus who the President had to pull together to form the Cabinet?

The nation did not have a chance to recruit the Cabinet. Should the President, if we are talking about investment and quality human resources, put out a vacancy notice for Ministers, who are willing to adjust their lifestyles in the interest of public service and recognise the spirit of development which the teacher articulated?

Surely things can’t be so bad in Guyana that there are no persons willing to work for  current salaries plus (from Mr Christopher Ram’s blog )  “24-hour security; all expenses paid vehicle and chauffeur; tax-free gratuity for their chauffeur; free electricity; free telephone; housing or housing allowance for Senior Ministers and the Attorney General, even when they live in their own homes; entertainment allowance when everyone knows the Ministers are the ones to be entertained; free crossing on toll bridges; no airport tax; generous leave and leave benefits; access to valuable medical benefits; and perhaps as valuable as all the other allowances put together, the right to duty exemption on a vehicle every three years.

Oh, and these are not all. MP’s are paid an additional $20,000 per month for being a member of a Parliamentary Sessional Committee; an additional $25,000 per month as a Chairman or Deputy Chairman (sic) of such a Committee; and an allowance of $15,000 per month as a representative of a Geographic Constituency. Conservatively, these are easily worth another million per month.”

There was news that the Government has appointed “Minsterial Advisers on Diaspora Affairs”. It is not clear how much these people will be rewarded for their sacrifices to advise Guyanese Ministers.  I mean, if the Guyanese Ministers get some local staff (maybe those who were fired from NCN/GINA/OP) to monitor Facebook and see all the passionate Diaspora Guyanese who are more passionate about Guyana than those who are here and who might be tempted to come down to enjoy the El Nino warmth during the cold winter months so that the numbers protesting the salary increases could be more than 26?

With all the talk about National Service and getting de yutes dem who idle to go and do National Service and learn a skill, and be conscious and love Guyana, what is the point when the Cabinet has people who have been saying that they do not love Guyana for even a million dollars worth of perks ?
The Ministers have been able to put a value on their salaries and apparently seemed to reach an agreement with the President.

A  teacher, a man my age who has been teaching for almost two decades , said his net take home is now around $63,000. We were talking on the road. The man’s riches were passing. People in office clothes, women in jeans, men with caps and locks and towel around their neck. Hailing him up with smiles and greetings. There are no tax free allowances to his salary. He has to spend a lot of money for his daughter’s transportation to school.

The teacher said he does not believe in beating children. He said that it is possible to deal with the issues in schools, if the Ministry could mobilise a policy on not beating children.  He said there is no real training to deal with the challenges. He believes that teachers involved in remedial and special needs education should be paid more.

He said if his take home pay in the current economy is about $125,000 it would work. Not a million dollars like I had hoped he would say. The current public service scale implies a GS11 which has positions like Law Revision Office, Health Economist.

It might be reasonable to expect that a teacher could be paid as much as the public servants (heck of even the Ministers?) she or he is expected to nurture. Even if we are not in a socialist based participatory economic system  despite how much we want to remember and idolise Burnham and Cheddi,

Some people  on the lunatic fringe have protested on the road. Others have protested in writing.
Some people want to pray away the increase. I think some are praying that their own investments in the coalition have not been squandered .

The young Pandit at the Navratra service reminded the congregation about one of the Hindu mantras. Mantras are meant to be ‘an instrument of the mind’ meant to represent Hindu philosophy and also to produce vibrations in the recitations. The Pandit referred to  a popular mantra( extracted here from Green Message) which is used to consider the clasped hands and by extension body as sources of power and action.

The representations are Lakshmi – resources which we could create,  Saraswati – knowledge, wisdom and Govindah the source of all power and energy. The pandit said that he believed this mantra indicates that our destinies are really in our own hands.

Thousands of Guyanese believed that they used their fingers to change from one Government to another, others have felt they were cheated. There are people who say they will vote again for the Coalition because ‘of the other good things which the Coalition is doing. Others will continue to vote against the PPP. Similar things to what the PPP supporters said when they voted.

We balance good and bad all the time.

I did not vote. Like many others who did not vote, I have no problems in supporting relevant Government actions – voluntarily as well.

A woman who was around in 1992 said that she was prepared to work for the new Government the same way she did in 1992.  We want Guyana to succeed. There are many Guyanese who volunteer their services and who have taken ‘lesser paying’ options to invest in Guyana.

If anything you can admire President Granger’s “difficult decision” about paying Cabinet in that the timing  is brilliant. Fresh after elections, with no other testing ground or anything else in place to reverse the decisions.

The teacher said that he and many others he knows voted for the Coalition – beyond the increase they calculated to come with the Coalition promises, they hoped for a working economy. He has not seen any urgency to deal with the economy. He has never left Guyana to work and doesn’t plan to do so. I asked him what could we do (and now thinking of the mantra .. what is our own power?)

We had no answers really.

I am disappointed in myself for being so disappointed in President Granger and his cabinet. More than anger, there is deep grief that the citizens since 1992 have been fooled by this thing called democracy – the grief of constantly losing what might have been.

It seems that the citizens will have to take the bad and the good and argue about the good and the bad because those who were more invested in this Coalition will not be able to deal with the sorrow which comes from the loss of what they held dear to them.

There was a faint hope that President Granger would have done a Venezuela and found a way to correct the situation with Guyana winning. I have lingering hopes that the President Granger and many members of his Cabinet will refute the beliefs that they  do not have to be paid not to tief.

There should be no need  in the middle of El Nino to have to be keeping a wake for Guyana outside the Ministry of the Presidency and Parliament.

This week, President Granger recently talked about defending the nation and strengthening the army.
What is this  nation we are supposed to defend, from whom , and for whose sake?