Wednesday 13th June 2007

I am amazed Mr. Speaker at the continuation of this mistrust agenda. I don’t know why I should be since we have only recently witnessed the greatest hat trick, sleight of hand, call it what you will in the history of the country: situation where mistrust becomes trust and lack of leadership becomes leadership.

I remember not two days ago standing in the newest subdivision in the Fox Hill constituency that of Freddie Munnings Manor and beings swarmed by flies.  The reason there were flies was because the garbage had not been collected in three weeks.  I have brought this to the attention of the Minister of Health.  But I raise it because in the scheme of things, it is more important to me to collect the garbage in Fox Hill than to be discussing in the waning hours of the day how to help the man who heads the mistrust agenda to make right that which is wrong and which no matter what we do will still be wrong.  He has always reminded me of those old communist dictators who whenever an idea became unpopular would call for all the history books and tear out the pages, as if that will change the facts.  The point I am making is that no matter how you change law what was done from 2002 was wrong by the Member for North Abaco, what was done to Sir Lynden Pindling was wrong and changing a law cannot change that fact.

While in that part of Fox Hill, I spoke to one of nine prison officers who are waiting, waiting for the government of review and investigation and putting on hold to carry out the lawful executive decision of the previous PLP administration and restore the rightful pension monies to the prison officers who retired from the service post 19th August 1992, came back to work on the strength of the promise that they would be able to get their full pension and salary.  They were denied this by an obscure provision in the pensions act as it applies to public servants which allows the Governor General to deprive some one of their pension.  But we now know that this is really defined to the rarest of circumstances that of a cause or a reason like a high crime or misdemeanor like treason or theft from the government.  But none of these circumstances applied to these men and one woman.  They served and they expected to get their pensions and were denied it.  The same happened also to Ruth Millar who now serves as the country’s Financial Secretary.  On the same day that we made the decision to right her wrong, we made the decision to right the wrongs against the prison pensioners.  But like so many decisions that has apparently been put on hold and no one can tell them when they will get their money.

The same thing applies to the management of the Civil Aviation Department, where as an interim measure we decided to give a certification allowance to senior staff until the salary review is finished.  They too cannot say when they will get their money.
 

It also applies to the police officers who were promised that they would be able to transfer to the Road Traffic Department and have security of tenure until their normal age of retirement.  We decided to set that wrong right as well but they too have not heard when they will be paid.

But ah Mr. Speaker, in the middle of the budget debate, while talking about the country's facts and fugues, the mistrust agenda has reared its head and we are being asked now to set right that which was wrong and continues to be wrong.  The answer from this side must a resounding no.  And we repeat the legal phrase which must be well known to some members: he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.

The story is not a complex one, nor is the history long.  The facts are stubborn and no matter how many radio ads are played, no matter how many Insight articles are written, no matter how many Punch stories are invented, how many dreams the inventors down at the newspaper plant on Shirley Street try to design, the truth is this bill is seeking to set right that which is wrong and that is wrong.  No man should be a judge in his own cause.

Mr. Speaker, in 2002  shortly after coming to office we discovered that then FNM Cabinet of The Bahamas made a decision in the absence of the Member for North Abaco to grant certain benefits to former Prime Ministers: maid car, policeman, secretary all at public expense. Now remember this was the same man who went on a public platform and boasted how he had stripped his predecessor of all of that and more: maid gone, house gone, policeman gone.   The gift of the Ingraham cabinet of all of this to their leader was done at the 11th hour, shortly before the general election 2002. But it was a lawful decision within the purview of the executive, and while we were surprised, we acquiesced and let it go.  Around that same time 16 public servants were promoted to the rank of undersecretary, just before the maximum leader demitted office.  It seemed clear to us that this was deliberately done to hobble our administration.  Again, we were surprised by it was a lawful scission and we acquiesced.  I go there not to revisit for its sake but to make the point that we held firmly to the creed that governments make decisions for governments, not political parties.  There must be continuity in the lawful decision making of The Bahamas and a country must come to accept certainty and respect for the rule of law. No suspend the contract for the straw market because you can.

This group should form themselves into a detective agency as they forensically pour through one file or another, and engage in the worst form of gotcha politics that we have seen in the history of the country.  Each day, someone running in here with a file saying: look what I have found.

I have taken some time to show what happened in the past because this is similar fact evidence. It evinces or shows a pattern of conduct on the part of the maximum leader and his mistrust agenda to fix himself up and then while he is fixing himself up he calls others crooks.

In 1998 a sick man, at the end of his political career, no less than the father of this nation, Sir Lynden Pindling resigned.  He was the beneficiary of a Prime Minister’s pension act.  That act was then devoid of any prohibition or restriction, that would have prevented the former Prime Minister from coming back to this place to serve or from continuing to serve.  But we all know from the document that was placed into the records of this House that the Member for North Abaco instructed in his own hand and scrawl that the pension should not be paid until it had been confirmed to the Secretary of the Cabinet by the then Speaker of the House that the former Prime Minister had resigned.  And we know that there was a great champagne party out west in the midst of the crotons as that day unfolded.

Later on the advice of counsel to the PLP government, that wrong was set right but the beneficiary of the setting right was not the man himself.  He died in the year 2000, went on to his reward with a kiss from the Member for North Abaco and a conditional forgiveness: if you forgive me I will forgive you.

That is the genesis of this story today, a deed, an act that will live infamy, an act of political treachery.  The full story of which must be told.

Not so long before this bill back in February 2006, this side put before the House a bill to amend the Prime Minister’s pension act.  That bill passed by the full support of the then House including Members opposite and it did two things: it prevented someone from sitting in this House after they have retired as Prime Minster and collecting both his salary and pension.  The Leader of the Opposition then Prime Minister could have used the opportunity to amend the law and give himself the right to have a full pension after five years but he did not abuse his majority in that way. I happen to think that the law should be changed to do that, to allow the pension regardless of the time that one has served as Prime Minister just as it is with the Governor General’s pension act.

But the Parliamentary Pensions Act does provide that you cannot double dip.  If you are collecting a Parliamentarians pension and you come back to this place, the pension has to stop.   That is the regime of that bill.  I think this side believes that the two regimes should be consistent.  It should avoid double dipping.  I happen to believe, knowing how calculating the Member for North Abaco is that he knew, must have known or was reckless in not knowing that the provision was absent, and he stood silently by pretending as we now know to the Member for Mt. Moriah that he was going, when all along he has set the ground work to come back and to slay the young leader he had put in place in his party with so much as a by your leave.

We provided an opportunity in our bill for the Member of Parliament for North Abaco to do the right thing and apply the same logic that he used on those prison pensioners and school teachers and others that he had their pensions withdrawn and within 21 days have the act that was passed in this House apply to him, so that his pension could be suspended while he was not retired.  Clearly, the Prime Minister’s pension bill was meant to follow the policy line that if you are retired, you are retired.  If you are out stay out.  One must always at the least be suspicious of those who go around saying how honest they are and then you find out whether wittingly or unwittingly they have actually acted to fix themselves up.

So now after the Member for North Abaco has refused to do the right thing, he comes to his House to say help me fix this up, help me make right that which was wrong and is still wrong.  Pass this bill for me. Do me this little favour, and all in favour to the west will say aye. After all the mistrust agenda has so decreed it.

We stick by the principle: if you are retired as Prime Minister you must retire and collect your pension.  If you come back, you must get your salary that you work for, but you must give up the pension until such time as you are retired.  This bill does not do that and so we cannot support it and I want to limit the principle to this time, this act, this person.  We do this because it is important for the Member for North Abaco to be internally consistent: you follow the line he followed with the retired prison officers and pensioners (who are today owed money), and until he pays them, we do not think that this House should consider this matter.

You think now that the changed man has power how can he who collects 9,500 dollars per month as a pension , stop the hiring of little workers whose lives are transformed by a 200 dollar a week government job.   How does he do it?  And some of them voted for him.

He promised while on the stump that he would donate all the monies that he was collecting as an MP and as the Leader of the Opposition to charity.  Now he says he wants in this bill to be able to pay it back to the consolidated fund: all for newspaper headlines as part of the mistrust agenda that will read how generous and honest he is to give money back to the Treasury.  This is a deed most foul. Mischief thou art afoot.

There is a history to all of this.  You claim you are righteous and are doing right; all the while you are doing wrong.  You use propaganda and ads on the radio to clean up an image that is not quite right, and are entirely cynical in the use of state power and private wealth to obtain nefarious ends.  The Opposition cannot be complicit in this propaganda effort.  If you do this act today, you do it by yourself and without our support.

There are some policy issues that need to be addressed about a Prime Minister’s pension, about a home for the Prime Minister but that issue can be obfuscated by this propaganda show here.  Give the money to charity that was paid to you during the last term as you promised.   Suspend your pension while you are Prime Minister or better yet give up being Prime Minister and go back to your retirement.  Then we grant you eternal rest. Amen.

Thank you Mr. Speaker.