Opposition fiddling with Jagdeo’s pension vindictive – HPS

Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) using their one-seat majority in the House to decide what benefits former President Bharrat Jagdeo must have is purely vindictive.
Speaking at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President, the Cabinet secretary said pensions and the right to pensions are moral issues and should not be threatened by the opposition.
He noted that the right to pension is one that was inherited and there should be no reason to amend and halt the enjoyment of such benefits as long it is enshrined in the law.
“So I don’t believe somewhere along the life of former President Arthur Chung, former Executive President Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, former Executive President Hugh Desmond Hoyte, former Executive President Cheddi Jagan, Samuel Hinds, Janet Jagan, that any of them during their lives as retired presidents, executive or otherwise, actually had to endure and had to face a parliamentary inspired coup to limit and to deny them  the full enjoyment that the others have enjoyed, and this is the perspective from which we see this matter,” Dr Luncheon stated.
“…. this is caprice, pure and simple, and who knows, maybe the next president maybe allowed, for as long as he lives, without any cap to enjoy these same benefits… if it is a bill and particularly in the face in the context of the administration’s rejection, one ought not to be surprised for the president to act predictably,” he warned.

Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had said the opposition was also seeking to “manufacture controversy” surrounding the issue with the aim of scoring cheap political points. He believed strongly that the opposition motion on Former Presidents Pension and Benefits tabled by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament Carl Greenidge was aimed at attacking the legacy of former President Bharrat Jagdeo.
“Let there be no doubt, this was an attempt to sully the track record and reputation of a distinguished Guyanese son, who rose to the highest office in the land and who served as Guyana’s longest serving president and served the country, the region and globally with distinction,” Dr Singh articulated.
Plot of jealousy
He was convinced that the opposition was seeking to roll out a plot of envy and jealousy while making clear their intentions to utilise the Parliament to get revenge against Jagdeo because of his outstanding stewardship of the Guyanese economy.
“This motion is fundamentally flawed… ill-conceived and poorly constructed,” Dr Singh had advised, noting that it is riddled with innuendoes since the issue of former presidents’ pensions and benefits became as contentious as it is because of deliberate misrepresentation and distortions by opposition opportunists.
The finance minister also noted that many of the opposition’s arguments were misinformed and not grounded in any facts, as he reminded them that the Former Presidents Pension and Benefits Bill was part of a series of legislations brought to the Parliament by the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).
He disclosed that before the move to Parliament, several former presidents were receiving benefits and facilities in the absence of the legislation on a discretionary basis, and at the mercy of what he called “administrative fiat”.
Singh said that the pension and benefits that Jagdeo is receiving is nothing new or significantly dissimilar to the services extended to former presidents, their widows or spouses and the leader of the opposition.
He said that both the computation of the value of his pension package and benefits were enshrined in law by the 2004 act, which requires that the incumbent president receive seven-eighths of his salary as his pension.
“Let there be no doubt that former presidents had long before, this 2009 act came as a bill… been in receipt of benefits and facilities referred to in this act,” he said.