Tit-for-tat continues in Parliament; takes away from debate on actual budget

Feb 25, 2021 News

The dome of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, where budget debates are being held

Kaieteur News – The National Assembly convened for the second day of budget debates at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, with some improvement on the vulgar heckling, which took place on the opening day. However, some Members of Parliament continued to take away from the purpose of the budget debates to question the integrity of their opponents, and making pronouncements on whose time in government was better, whether it was the last five years of A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) or the 23 years prior, under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).
While MPs like Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, and Alliance for Change (AFC) Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, devoted their speeches to budget 2021, others almost completely ignored it.
Time which could have been spent discussing the policies and initiatives laid out in the extensive budget, which Senior Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, spent nearly five hours presenting last week, was instead spent hammering MPs on the other side of the aisle about matters already well ventilated in the press in the past two years.
MPs spent a lot of time getting into tit-for-tats about: the Bertram Collins College of the Public Service, with accusations of nepotism came from the current Public Service Minister to the former, the 2020 General and Regional Elections saga, the life and record of the late President Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, and which major party does more for Afro-Guyanese people.
Other topics of discussion substantially unrelated to budget 2021 included MP Cathy Hughes’ “missing” laptop which was later found right under her chair, and whether MP Sherod Duncan returned money to the Guyana Chronicle after an audit revealed multiple transactions did not follow financial regulations during his tenure as general manager.

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