THE OPPOSITION SHOULD YIELD TO THE GOVERNMENT’S RIGHT TO PREPARE ITS OWN BUDGET

Oct 27, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The first sitting of the present session of the National Assembly did not go well. The outcome does not augur well for relations between the government and the opposition.
The two sides of the House are animated and this posture does not augur well for the compromise and understanding between them. It is obvious that there are serious differences between the sides, differences which began on day one of the commencement of parliament and which worsened after the breakdown of the Budget talks.
The hostility and viciousness shown by the opposition towards the government has effectively led to a breakdown of relations and it is hard to see this relationship being mended especially since the onslaught against the Budget and the subsequent developments in Linden.
For all intents and purposes the tripartite talks have been shelved and are not likely to be resumed. The government is not without some blame for this but once the opposition understood where the government was coming from it could have demonstrated greater flexibility.
The opposition has learnt very little from its experience of the past year and strangely, continues to insist that it should be part of the framing of the Budget. They apparently have not been reading the lips of the government which has made it clear that it considers the duty to prepare the Budget as its and its alone. The opposition has taken umbrage to this approach and the AFC in particular launched a vicious broadside against the government by threatening to cut billions from certain ministries. Fortunately, APNU did not side with the AFC which retreated after public servants were organized and took to protests outside of the National Assembly fearing that they would lose their jobs.
The opposition lost face with the public over its Budget antics and it should avoid going down that road again. There is no need to cut any Budget. The country’s economy is doing well, revenues are increasing and therefore the Budget allocation should be increasing.
The court has since given a preliminary ruling it which it stated that the opposition cannot cut the Budget; they can either accept or reject it. This at least should have forced force a modification of tactics but strangely there has still persisted the call for the opposition to be part of the preparation of the Budget.
Even if the government was open towards the concept of a joint Budget, the opposition has not given the government reason to take this approach. In the close to one year that the government has been in existence, the opposition has demonstrated very little goodwill or reasonableness.
The opposition has now soured relations by its intractable demand that the Minister of Home Affairs tender his resignation. The opposition has now boxed itself into a corner by insisting that they would not cooperate with the Minister of Home Affairs. The stance on the Minister of Home Affairs means that the opposition will not approve the expenditure for the police in next year’s Budget which will lead to a serious security crisis in the country. How the opposition plans to extricate itself from this mess is uncertain but it should at least try to appreciate the parameters that the government wants to establish to guide relations between the government and the opposition in so far as the Budget is concerned.
The government insists on the right to prepare its own Budget. The opposition should accept this and instead insist on its right to reject the Budget unless good faith negotiations with the government takes place after it would have been tabled. Why is this difficult proposition for the opposition to accept?
In fact this is a better option than wanting to have a joint Budget. It certainly means that the opposition cannot be blamed for flaws or omissions. It also means that if things go wrong, it cannot be blamed since it will limit itself to certain specific objectives. Having post Budget negotiations seemed to have been working in the opposition’s favour earlier this year when agreement was almost reached between APNU and the government. It can do so again once the same machinations that intervened the last time are not repeated.
The tripartite process for all intents and purposes will not go anywhere until there is an improvement in the relationship between the government and the opposition and this improvement will not occur until the opposition understands that they must stop operating like bullies and begin to act in good faith.

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THE OPPOSITION SHOULD YIELD TO THE GOVERNMENT’S RIGHT TO PREPARE ITS OWN BUDGET

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