…AG hints at passing act to repeal Green’s $20.5M pension
Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton has defended the remarks made by former PNC General Secretary Hamilton Green, contending that his statements on rigged elections were taken out of context.
Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton
Norton, when asked for a comment on the situation during a press conference on Thursday, argued that Green was speaking hypothetically.
“He said “if”,” Norton posited.
“I think what Green was saying [is], ‘you’re saying we’re rigging, if we are rigging, then we should rig to change the government’,” Norton contended.
“The context was changed,” he insisted, further asserting that Green is a veteran politician who “has the ability to choose language”.
“He wouldn’t make wild statement[s].”
The Opposition Leader is also of the opinion that the remarks made by Green do not affect the image of the PNC, which has a history of electoral skullduggery, with the most recent being during the 2020 elections.
In fact, a number of PNC affiliates are currently before the courts on electoral fraud related charges including Volda Lawrence and Carol Joseph-Smith.
Green, a former Prime Minister under the Burnham government, on Friday last suggested that election rigging be used to remove the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration from office.
He was at the time addressing a group of persons gathered for the LFS Burnham Foundation Annual Commemorative Symposium 2024 – an event organised to commemorate the 101st birth anniversary of Linden Forbes Burnham – former PNC leader and President of Guyana, whose legacy is largely attributed to his dictatorship-style leadership and blatant rigging of several elections.
Among other things, Green expressed, “…It was Burnham’s wisdom which got him into office in 1964. I was General Secretary at the critical time. And if, as I told one of the groups I met [Friday] morning, if they say he rigged elections, I say we should keep rigging to save us from these devils, these bastards, these demons that we have.”
Defence & Distance
This is not the first time Norton has defended widely criticised remarks made by PNC members. In March 2023, Norton defended the racist and divisive statements made by members of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
At a public meeting in Buxton on the East Coast of Demerara, Ogunseye had made incendiary remarks about Indo-Guyanese and called for the Disciplined Services “to turn their guns on the State.”
But Norton posited that “the Opposition believes that Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye’s right to free speech must be respected, even though we believe that his language could have been better chosen. The choice of his language is his preserve.”
Interestingly, PNC’s James Bond – who oftentimes is at loggerheads with positions taken by party elders – has since distanced himself from the remarks made by Green, saying in a Facebook post that, “IF the words attributed to former Mayor Hamilton Green are true he does not speak for me. I’m sure also he does not speak for the PNC either. Free and fair elections are here to say and we support a democratic constitutional process to changing Government.”
Condemnation
Nevertheless, Green’s remarks have since attracted the condemnation from the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and Attorney General Anil Nandlall.
Nandlall, during his programme “Issues in the News”, argued that the remarks “strike at the rule of law, they strike at the heart of democracy, they strike at the soul of our constitution, and at the soul of constitutional rule, they strike at the root of rule of law.
“It is no coincidence that Hamilton Green is saying that at Burnham’s commemorative birth anniversary and at a function arranged by the Burnham Foundation, because the history of this country records Forbes Burnham, along with sidekicks and sycophants like Hamilton Green and many others…rigged the 1968 elections, the 1973 elections, the 1978 referendum, the 1980 elections, and the 1985 elections. Burnham had died by ’85, but Desmond Hoyte, his successor, continued with the rigging. The history of this country also recorded that when Desmond Hoyte acceded to democratic reforms, after the intervention of the Carter Centre and after years and years of agitation by Guyanese and the Peoples Progressive Party and many other political parties, Hamilton Green opposed those reforms, and eventually opposed Desmond Hoyte as the leader of the PNC.
“Hamilton Green is on public record saying that Hoyte has given away the government by agreeing to those democratic reforms,” the AG reminded, while also pointing to the events that unfolded during the 2020 elections.
Pension
Meanwhile, Nandlall highlighted that the very PNC-led APNU/AFC government in 2017 honoured such a man with a national award and even passed an act to allow him to benefit from a whopping pension.
But the Attorney General asked: “Why should Guyanese use their hard-earned money to pay him a pension that he is not entitled to?
“They passed a special Act in March 2017, the Prime Minister Hamilton Green Pension Act, to give him a special pension. You know why they had to pass an Act? Because he was not entitled to it,” he said.
The AG has since asserted that, “an Act of Parliament can be repealed by an Act of Parliament. Why should this Act not be repealed for these kinds of statements that can lead to the destruction of Guyana and its people…?”
The Bill provides for Green to receive all benefits provided for by the Former President (Benefits and Other Facilities) Act 2015.
The value of these benefits is an annual pension of $20.5 million, other benefits to the value of $3.1 million annually, two vehicles provided and maintained by the State, and two first-class annual airfares provided by the State.
Additionally, the former Prime Minister also qualifies for an ex-parliamentarian pension, together with whatever benefits accrue from his period as Mayor of Georgetown.
