Ramotar dares opposition to challenge legality of spent $4.5B in Court

Jun 29, 2014 News

By Gary Eleazar
Head of State, Donald Ramotar, has come out in defence of the government’s expenditure of $4.5B that was not approved by the Political Opposition when in April they voted against the provisions.
Ramotar is of the opinion that if the opposition believes that it was unlawful then it can challenge the matter in the Court of Law.
The President, at a press conference at State House, yesterday, said that the expenditure was lawful and pointed to Article 218 (3) of the Constitution.
That section of the Constitution reads: “No moneys shall be withdrawn from any public fund other than the Consolidated Fund unless the issue of those moneys has been authorized by or under an Act of Parliament.”
The only bit of legislation authorizing the use of money from the Consolidated Fund for 2014 was the Appropriation Bill, more commonly referred to as the Budget, but this was approved minus the expenditure that Dr Singh detailed recently in the National Assembly, namely the Statement of Excess.
Ramotar said that he wanted to clear up the misconceptions being peddled by the opposition. “There was a lot of distortion taking place in the media and I thought I should deal with it.”
Ramotar questioned the motives behind criticizing the $4.5B expenditure. He said that in 2012 and 2013 Government did the exact same thing and the opposition eventually voted for the expenditure.
He was referring to the Budget cuts of those two years that were restored by the Executive.
“Everything we do, we do within the constitution. If you go to Article 218 (3) of the Constitution you will see very, very clearly that the constitution has given us that right to take these matters to Parliament.”
Ramotar questioned why the opposition would want to call the expenditure unconstitutional when “they themselves participated in this process in 2012 and 2013.”
According to Ramotar, the opposition did not see the course of action as unconstitutional then. “Why are they now branding it unconstitutional?”
He said that the money that Government is putting back into the system is for items such as the Amerindian Development Fund, required to develop interior communities.
He pointed, too, to some of the money being used under the Low Carbon Development Strategy, and the University of Guyana’s Student loan.
Another amount in the Statement of Excess is for salaries at Office of the President and according to Ramotar, if the Executive is expected to carry out its functions effectively on behalf of the nation “we have to put that in place. I think the cutting of the money for Office of the President was totally unconstitutional on their part.”
The President was adamant that there seems to be a sinister purpose for the criticisms being leveled against the administration over the expenditure.
Ramotar was unwavering that all of the money spent is covered under the Constitution.
He said if the Opposition had any real qualms about the money being spent “take us to the Court, we have a Constitutional Court, we have a court that deals with constitutional issues…Let them go to the court and let the court determine if it is constitutional or not.”
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) on Friday had lashed out at the administration over the expenditure of the money and even called for the Finance Minister to be prosecuted in the Court of Law.
APNU’s Joseph Harmon said that the time is close where persons responsible for the expenditure of public monies, must face the courts for infractions.
“I don’t think there should be any dancing around this point…If you take public money and you spend it in your own way, you should face the music.”
According to Harmon, Guyanese will have to require that this is done.
He was adamant that Ministers who take taxpayers’ dollars and spend it as if it were their own without the approval of the National Assembly “should also face the court and I believe that Dr Ashni Singh should be on his way there.”

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