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AFC will take part in Budget debates – Ramjattan
The Alliance for Change (AFC) walked out of the Budget Presentation by Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh citing lack of budgetary consultation from government’s end. Yesterday, it announced that it will be taking part in the Budget debates.
According to the leader of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan, his party never intended to walk out of the entire thing. “Our walk out was to give publicity again to that fact that since July 1, they [Government] just did not want us to be part and parcel of the process, especially in the context of this being a minority government; that’s why we wanted to raise the issue nationally.”
Leader of the AFC Khemraj Ramjattan
The AFC leader said that his party walked out on the Finance Minister’s presentation to protest the violation of our Constitution by this government in not holding meaningful consultation on the budget, whilst it had the time to do so.”
Another issue, according to AFC, was that “the Capital Estimates would be padded to include high profile, pet projects for which multi-billion-dollar contracts would be ‘approved’ by Cabinet under the ‘no objection’ status quo, in anticipation of the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission.”
Ramjattan said that the 2014 budget was presented by a Minister who “is accused of disobeying the decisions of the National Assembly and, in disregard of those decisions, restored funds that were not approved by the said assembly. He has been placed before the Privileges Committee of the National Assembly.”
“Our protest will now take the form of actually criticizing budgetary allocations and the budgetary policies, and so we will be there for the debate, we will also be there for the Committee of Supply and we are going to have as now ruled by the Chief Justice non approval for very many of the items that we feel dissatisfied with.”
According to the AFC leader his party is going to make its “objections known to those items when the Committee of Supplies comes to them.”
Ramjatan did say however that the AFC has a “vested interest to support increased allocations for the social sectors including education, health, housing, water, environment, and security. AFC will demand more dollars for wages, pensions and social assistance. We support subventions to organizations that promote assistance to the vulnerable in the society.”
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