Bonus by another name
Kaieteur News – We are touched with embarrassment at what happened in Guyana’s sensitive Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). We are even more ashamed by what the ERC Chairman, a gentleman of the cloth and that special call to let your “yes be yes, and you’re gay,” used the media channel to set the record straight on what was or was not received for a Christmas Bonus. As we sift through what the ERC chairman was angry at, our conclusion is that it would have been better if he remained silent and let the matter die under his own weight; he did not travel the simplest and narrowest route.
This is our view because what the chairman did, in his response to the baffling revelations of another board member, was to play games with the English Language. To be clear, the chairman did not give a rank iniquity. To his credit, he owned what happened in ERC board discussions and conclusions on the issue of rewarding its members with a cash grant. But what was alarming was the flag under which he sought to shelter and use as a justification for the money the board voted under his leadership for themselves. The chairman of the ERC failed and was very upset. As we said earlier, he should have stayed quiet and stayed in the shadows, in the hope that the unfavorable winds would blow over.
First, the chair of the ERC pointed out that, as noted by another commission member, it was not a sum of $ 200,000 per board member, but way less a figure of $ 150,000. We pardon the chairman and the Guyanese public for thinking that is a distinction without much difference, other than that small number from which the original amount was reduced. We may have been more understanding, and more receptive, to a final sum awarded of a maximum of $ 50,000. That would have represented a 75 percent drop in that initial $ 200,000 figure, and conveyed to all citizens, as they struggled, that the ERC was struggling too, and in tune with them in the shared sacrifices that the COVID-19 pandemic has called on all Guyanese – indeed, almost the entire world – to deal with, and try to match, what is at hand. That said, we believe that a mere 25 percent discount of the $ 200,000 bonus offer is insulting and self-serving. It does not send the right message to Guyanese victims, especially the many who are not in a position to deal with the financial demands of the pandemic.
If the ERC had stopped there, there was a small chance of limiting the damage caused, the questions and shadows thrown at the ERC’s work, and the truths about what its members’ first priorities are. But he didn’t, and that’s what dug a deeper hole for all the members of this board who stand as a trusted sentinel to oversee Guyana’s tensions and hostility among its divided peoples. The chairman went on to clear the air by delivering another incredible defense: was that the $ 150,000 amount the board awarded itself was not a Christmas Bonus, but that it was considered a COVID-19 release and its intent to serve.
This is unbelievable, and one must think Guyanese is dumb. They may be dumb, but no one should make the mistake of being stupid. This so-called COVID-19 release has to be called for what it is in all its elements: It’s a Christmas bonus by another name, one that masters as something else, which it clearly finds difficult to be, but is nothing. And it was said that the ERC board’s discussions on the bonus / relief issue took place before any information and information on the amount the government was going to complete and, therefore, equated to a shot in the dark, or many with a different number written on each, looking and sounding lame, and falling flat.
It stands to reason that there was no way the current government, or anything in that regard, was going to approve a bonus / release number in the vicinity of six figures. There is something wrong with that kind of thinking, and ERC board members do not look in the best of light, given what happened. We believe they have erred in what flies before common sense. We further believe that the ERC chairman added insult to injury when we tried to defend what happened, and the shaky logic he employed as cover-ups.