Limitations in budgetary process for Opposition MPs expertly concealed

Feb 22, 2009 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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By AFC Vice-Chairperson,
Sheila Holder, MP

As I sat through the gruelling hours of the parliamentary debates on the 2009 budget it dawned on me that the long hours I had to endure night after night might be seen as poetic justice for the traffic inconveniences members of the public had to put up with during sittings of the National Assembly. It seems to me that the only interest Guyanese had in the business of the National Assembly related to their annoyance of the blocking off of traffic along Brickdam and Avenue of the Republic within the vicinity of the Parliament Building.

However, inside the National Assembly I became brutally aware of the advantages, and I dare say disadvantages, of internet technology as I received instantaneous messages on my PDA from persons in distant countries expressing their critical opinions about what was being said in the National Assembly. This was as a result of the Guyana Press Association’s daily audio transmissions being beamed around the world via their website -www.demerarawaves.com – on the 2009 budgetary estimates that had been presented by the Finance Minister two weeks ago. I predict that this innovation will have far reaching political implications for the government as well as Members of Parliament who have so far gotten away with a lack lustre parliamentary culture.

The tenor of the parliamentary debate led me to believe that Members of Parliament on the Government side were somehow operating under the belief that they, were in some material way, different from those of us who sat on the opposition side; perhaps because they were the ones wielding power. So it was necessary to make the point that no one side was more loyal to the Guyanese people, and their developmental aspirations, than the other. We in the AFC hold the view that no one party has a monopoly on ideas and talent, and I therefore submitted for contemplation by members in the Assembly these less known but thought provoking words of Martin Luther King Jr: “We have learnt to fly the sky like birds, swim the seas like fishes, but we are yet to learn the simple way of walking the earth like brothers”.

In expressing an opinion on the 2009 Budget, the Kaieteur Newspaper editorial of Saturday February 14 stated: “Our Govt has before it – in living colour, so to speak, through the magic of 24/7 all-news TV – the evidence of Governments of all stripes and ideologies, from the communist Chinese to the capitalist Americans, unveiling various and sundry economic “stimulus” plans, yet we have chosen to merely plod along in a singularly pedestrian fashion.” I found this description of the 2009 budget most apt; and given the economic realities we have been facing in Guyana over the last decade and the impending impact of the global financial meltdown, it was indeed problematic for members of the opposition to get a handle on what really the Government had in mind when it presented the 2009 budget. A budget that was singularly pedestrian in its fashioning!

Unfortunately, this budget has fooled no one with any rudimentary understanding of the state of Guyana’s economy; but I was surprised to learn that – even though Kaieteur News has been covering the proceedings in the National Assembly for several years – their editorial writer did not understand that, realistically, it was not possible for elected representatives of the opposition to influence the Government to make changes to the 2009 budget after it had been presented.

The reason being, the PPP/C Government habitually applies their parliamentary majority to approve all their budgetary estimates without so much as altering one word proposed by the members of the opposition. Regrettably, the Guyanese people – including many among the professional classes – have been deceived by PPP/C propaganda that the opposition’s propensity is for criticising rather than making ‘alternative proposals’. Clearly, people fell for this yarn or they would have understood the limitations which the budgetary process affords opposition Members of Parliament during the debates. Any input would have had to be made prior to the presentation of the budget, thereby emphasising the importance of consultation with various stakeholders.

It has been my experience over the last eight years serving in the National Assembly that there has never been a budget debate when one word or one bit of advice offered in good faith by members of the opposition benches has ever been taken on board by a PPP/C Government. Quite likely this has been traditionally so, perhaps even from time immemorial during the earlier tenure of other PPP/C and PNC Governments. Under these circumstances, the deliberative process that ought to flow from a democratic parliamentary system is being undermined and partisan political action accelerated instead.

The fact that this flaw in itself is a cause for fractures in our country’s social, political and economic environment is one thing; but that it has been allowed to be perpetuated says a lot about why more rapid development evades this country. One thing we know is that this situation is not conducive to Guyana’s development and that is why the AFC has accepted the challenge to provide the leadership necessary to change it. The great mind of scientist Albert Einstein devised the way for this to be achieved with this profound thought: “You can’t solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.”

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