The results of the elections were not a mandate for shared governance

Dec 22, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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We must not misrepresent the results of the 2011 general and regional elections. Those elections led to the PPPC winning the presidency by virtue of it receiving the largest bloc of votes, and the combined opposition holding a slim one- seat majority in the National Assembly.
The results of the elections mean that the government will be forced to cooperate across party lines, something that Jimmy Carter, the former United States President and the Head of the Carter Center, had been calling for since 2001.
The people of Guyana did not however vote for shared government or for shared governance. Just under half of the electorate voted for the PPPC and would have loved nothing more than to see that party win a majority. Just over 40 per cent of the electorate voted for APNU and would have loved to see APNU control both the government and the National Assembly. Just over 10 per cent of the population voted for the Alliance for Change. The combined consequence of those results is that the ruling party has executive power but the combined opposition has a slim majority that allows them control of the National Assembly.
The results of the elections therefore are that there will be a need for cooperation between political parties in the National Assembly. This is something that is going to please many because it means that the votes of the losing parties would still be highly influential but to say that the people of Guyana voted for power sharing or shared governance would not be accurate.
The government has its job to do and it is getting down to business. When the time comes for the opposition to do its work in parliament, it will be expected that it too will do its work and negotiate to ensure its interests are respected.
No one expects that things will always go their way. In politics there is always give and take and given the level of maturity of the leaders of all the parties, there is no reason why reasonableness cannot prevail.
One of the campaign promises of the ruling People’s Progressive Party was a review of the VAT. The President has since appointed a panel to undertake this review. This is technical exercise that is being conducted.
The opposition however is not pleased. It feels that in the context of the ongoing political cooperation taking place between the parties and the government that it should have been involved. However it has to understand that the President is merely undertaking a technical review of the VAT and that its turn will come to have its say since no changes can be made to the VAT unless there are changes to the law. For changes to the law to take place, the approval of the opposition in parliament would be required.
So the opposition should not get too upset. Let the government do its technical review. From this review, the government will formulate its position, and then will have to sit with the opposition to discuss the final position. So the opposition should not feel slighted by its non- participation in this review process.
The opposition should be more worried about its own position as advanced in their manifestos and whether they will be able to realistically go ahead with those positions.
Before the elections there were calls within the opposition for a reduction of VAT. All the opposition parties had said that they will reduce VAT. But the public needs to be reminded about the specifics.
VAT is now 16%. APNU is calling for this to be reduced to 10%, but there is a catch and this is where the fine print comes in. APNU is saying that the VAT should be reduced to 10% not immediately but over four years. So the public should not have grand expectations that APNU is calling for an immediate slashing of VAT.
In fact, if APNU’s manifesto position on the VAT is adopted, it will result in a mere average 1.5% reduction in VAT per year which will not please many consumers who may have been hoping for an immediate reduction to 10%.
Not even the Alliance for Change was proposing such a reduction. The AFC was proposing an immediate reduction in VAT to 12%. Now this too is likely to fall far short of public expectations.
The review of the VAT is of course just one element of tax reform. There are many other areas in which reform is needed and in which the opposition parties have also made suggestions which may not be consistent with their desire to improve the livelihoods of the ordinary man.
Certainly, for example, one of the proposals which calls for the income tax threshold to be raised over time to $100,000 is never likely to see the light of day.
The opposition therefore should not be too worried about this review of the VAT. This is just a small aspect of the whole process of tax reform which when it get going is going to place a great number of the opposition’s proposals under the microscope and expose their serious shortcomings.

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