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APNU promises Parliamentary scrutiny over Gov’t coffers
It has been three years since a coalition of political parties formed A Partnership for National Unity (APNU).
Leader of APNU
David Granger
The coalition along with the Alliance for Change (AFC) was able to obtain the Parliamentary majority by one seat changing the political dispensation of the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) in the National Assembly after elections in 2011.
APNU is contending that its support continues to grow but the party with constitutional control over the executive branch “persists in its one-party, winner-takes-all’ style administration.”
According to APNU Leader, David Granger, the PPP/C is losing support because it is ignoring the needs of the masses.
“The majority of our people languish in poverty as a result of the high cost-of-living; the high rate of unemployment among the young; the high rate of dropouts from primary and secondary schools and the high rate of migration of educated graduates. The population has been forced to bear the burden of the PPPC’s executive lawlessness.”
Granger’s Vice President and Shadow Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, said, “It is still very difficult to explain to people out of Guyana, how a country with less than a million mouths to feed and with enormous resources at our disposal, a country that has been so endowed that we should in fact be struggling the way we are.”
According to Roopnaraine, Guyana’s working people should not be in a state of discouragement and hardship. “This is what we are facing. We are facing a position where there is rapid accumulation of wealth by a small handful of people attached to the ruling party and the widespread hardship among working people.”
Roopnaraine is of the view that “if we are to correct these huge imbalances in our society, if we are to develop any kind of social justice for the majority of the population, our calls for reconciliation must be heeded and acted upon.”
“We have a situation where the Executive cannot do as it pleases and the combined opposition cannot do as it pleases either.”
“It requires accommodation, it requires engagement and we need a season of good will, of generosity, and of imagination if we are going to move this country forward.”
Parliamentary Scrutiny
Asked about the public expecting more from the coalition taking into context that it had the majority in the National Assembly, APNU said, “The work that we have been doing in the National Assembly has in a real way raised the expectation of the population.
“The reason for that, never before in the last 20 years, has the population had so much access as it presently does to information. And this information has come about not through an act of generosity on the part of the government but because of the insistence of the combined opposition to hold it to account.”
Roopnaraine said that over the last three years there has been more accountability, and more scrutiny in the National Assembly.
He said that the Special Sector Committees in Parliament, “we had the Minister of Natural Resources, the head of the GGMC, the head of Forestry, the head of the Guyana Lands and Surveys, we had all of these people there facing a Parliamentary Committee to provide information as they were questioned.”
“As a result, information about Bai Shan Lin, information about Bosai, information about all kinds of things are now in the public domain.”
None of these things would be in the public domain were it not for the scrutiny activity by the opposition parties, he said
“They know a lot more about Mr Jagdeo’s benefits than they knew previously, questions to Ministers coming… they have to answer in writing and it is one of the ways to get specific commitments out of particular Ministers.”
Roopnarine conceded, that not all of the demands and expectations of the people can be met by APNU since “we don’t control the treasury, but what we can do is to ensure that the treasury is not abused, that the consolidated fund is not treated like the private bank account of members of the government, that we can assure, that is the work we see ourselves having to do in the National Assembly.”
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