Negating the edge

Jan 13, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Incumbency has its advantages and disadvantages. The party in power can pursue policies aimed at enhancing their appeal to the electorate and can time major projects to coincide with the hosting of elections.
This is no doubt what the major opposition feels is at work in relation to the four-billion dollar supplementary spending that is being applied for by the National Assembly. But as was demonstrated in parliament this past week, incumbency also has its disadvantages such as when a minister has to face a torrid reception from the main opposition and is forced to go on the defensive instead of making hay out of his ministry’s programmes and policies.
Forget about the charges of contempt for the National Assembly. The opposition must not be too harsh on a young kid who was unable to deal adequately with the barrage of questions that came his way. While they can make political capital over the young man’s inability to deal with the questions, they should also realize that they also have some young parliamentarians who could very well have found themselves in the same position.
What is not clear is how the monies are going to be spent and the main opposition regardless of the passage of the four billion dollars provision, has caused a serious dent in the credibility of the government and has exposed the inexperience of the new Minister of Housing and Water.
They could have done much better had they done the math involved in this case. For example, the explanation offered by the Minister of Housing and Water is that the monies will be used for 17,000 house lots. Well, each house lot holder pays in excess of $100,000 per lot and therefore this means that about half of the four billion dollars will come from those who are supposed to benefit. The government therefore only has to spend about half of this sum.
The problem, as has been explained time and time again in this column, is that the government makes policies around numbers rather than making policies and then trying to determine how much these will cost and what is affordable.
A case in point was the assistance that was to be given to single parents. The government simply announced that it was implementing a $100M programme to assist single parents. This was done even before the government had determined just how many single parents there were in Guyana and before it had narrowed down precisely the nature of the intervention. It simply set down a figure and then set about building a programme to match the numbers. This is what is called back-to-front economic planning.
In the end, the government found that there were so many single parents registered that it could only offer assistance to a select portion of these registrants, and only for helping them with day care assistance. It may have been much better if the government had used those funds to help track down fathers who were not supporting their children.
In the case of housing, there is a great suspicion that the same procedure followed. The government allocated a sum of four billion dollars, but has not yet worked out the details of how this sum is going to be spent. If this is what explains why there were not adequate details to satisfy the opposition, then the opposition should not be surprised at all.
The Minister may very well review his performance in the National Assembly and issue a press release providing the details. But this would not be the proper thing to do since parliament is the forum whereby the minister should detail his policies.
The opposition should not be worried about the minister and their disappointment with his answers. They should be more concerned with this constant approach to the National Assembly for supplemental proposals. This says that the problems with planning are far greater than presumed, and this is where they can make political capital thereby negating the advantage of incumbency.

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