Monday’s budget: Mundatory or mundungas?

Mar 21, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Monday, the PPP Government will make the 2013 budget known to the nation. Will it be like a mundatory (sacred cloth use in cleaning the vessel used in Holy Communion) or mundungus, a stink-smelling tobacco? I can only offer my opinion. And in so doing I will use the history of the PPP since the rise of the Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo to guide me.
There will not be anything sacred about the 2013 budget. On the contrary, it will be denounced as foul by the opposition and the 2012 scenario will be reproduced. All Guyanese will wait in agonizing suspension to see if there will be cuts as what happened last year or the APNU and the AFC fearing the Government will ignore the chopped sections, will vote down the estimates in their entirety.
The removed items were restored. The government says that it has an opinion by the Chief Justice that points to the illegality of the removals last year. Mr. Christopher Ram told this columnist that this is a preliminary ruling and not a formal court decision but in any case should have been challenged by the opposition.
Why was it not? One suspects that both APNU and the AFC are relying on the Speaker’s judgement that the National Assembly has the power to regulate its own business.
The opposition’s reliance on the Speaker’s self-proclamation is self-destructive. The Government restored the list of curtailed estimates last year. What prevents the Finance Ministry from doing the same after Monday? The answer is that there is nothing in the world and Guyana that will stop the Ministry this year. And it will be done because the Government is treating the Chief Justice’s remark as a court decision.
The opposition will have its credibility further damaged if it fumigates the most offensive sections of the mundungus and the Government picks them up, cleans them and restores them. So it is possible that we will have a parliamentary rejection of the 2013 budget? To answer that question we have to choose between mandatory or mundungus. I choose the latter. Here is why.
The PPP since Jagdeo (I do believe Mrs. Janet Jagan to a lesser extent but more so Cheddi Jagan would have been disposed to areas of compromise and concession with the opposition) have manifested incredible inflexibility in its approach to the exercise of power. The psychology of the Jagdeo regime which is carried over into the Ramotar presidency is driven by unrelenting confrontation.
The PPP Government is psychologically handicapped in devising ways of relating to the opposition and other critical components of the Guyanese society.
This bizarre mental flight shows up even in its relationship with stakeholders who though they are sympathetic to the PPP, may ask for some basic concessions that governments need to offer. For example, the PPP Government will not concede to reform of the Integrity Commission and the establishment of the Procurement Commission as requested from the Private Sector Commission (PSC) because such a project was born out of a discussion the PSC had with the Transparency Institute. In the collective mind of the PPP, Transparency Institute is an anti government body that keeps carping on corruption.
Since Mr. Jagdeo came to power, the cloth the PPP wore under its well-intentioned leader, Cheddi Jagan has been destroyed. The PPP lost its parliamentary majority in 2011 and will lose it again because Guyanese do not see the PPP as the party of Cheddi Jagan. Indians, its backbone, can no longer be convinced that what has taken place under Mr. Jagdeo and is happening now is the stamp of Cheddi Jagan.
On Monday, the PPP leadership through Dr Ashni Singh will table a budget that is devoid of opposition input. The PPP is so mentally destroyed that it cannot accept that modern politics is about give and take, trading and the game of you win some- you lose some. Inside the minds of those who control the PPP, once a concession is made, dominoes will start falling and the opposition will crowbar the door to power. Guyanese know this is nonsense and highly macabre. But this is the way the PPP thinks.
The 2013 budget will not contain any serious idea put forward by APNU or AFC even though opposition suggestions were presented since last year. Even in the area of commonsense where the PPP could be made to look good, the PPP rejects those pathways. Imagine the courts had to compel them to pay compensation to a little boy the police tortured.
My belief is that commonsense and dictatorship are antithetical

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