A TEST FOR THE OPPOSITION
April 3, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
The recourse to cutting the Budget may be the opposition’s way of compensating for not being able to offer constructive criticisms and feasible alternatives to the government’s programmes.
It is left to be seen just how the opposition will respond this time around. It is left to be seen what will be the basis of their criticisms and whether they can ditch personal attacks and employ in its place reasoned arguments.
That may be asking too much of the opposition, but they really need to prove that they are capable of unmasking the 2013 Budget. They also have to prove that at the end of the day they can wrest reasonable compromises from the government.
It is no use asking, like the AFC did last year, about where the government was finding the money to make major pharmaceutical purchases, when it was the same opposition that supported the passage of the health budget.
It is no use asking about the overall costs of the airport expansion project if funding for this project was approved last year. That would be like closing the stable doors after the horse has bolted.
It is no use trying to make out as if certain public officials are “fat cats” when there has been no public disclosure as to what some parliamentarians earn, inclusive of fringe benefits, for their work in the National Assembly.
In a recent court case it was revealed that a member of parliament paid five million dollars in tax for one year alone. This means that his annual income for that year was in excess of fifteen million dollars. How then can one justify this talk about “fat cats”?
These arguments are good for the camera, but they do not conceal the absence of credible alternatives and solid criticisms. And this is what one has to look out for in this year’s Budget debates.
The government is expected to spend a great deal of time outlining what it did last year and what it plans to do this year. It will come with concrete facts and with statistics to make its case.
And it must be recalled that the economy did very well last year and therefore it will be hard for the opposition to find solid grounds to be critical of the management of the economy.
The opposition parties will therefore be sorely tested in this year’s Budget debate. They will be on the ones on trial, not the government. The public will be looking towards them to see what criticisms they can offer and how strong or weak are these criticisms.
The people of Guyana will want to know where the opposition stands on this Budget. They are not interested in learning about cuts. They want to know how, if the opposition had $209 billion dollars to spend, how they would spend this sum.
That may be asking the opposition parties too much, because they do not have the political experience of managing such a large Budget. But at least they should be able to think about some of the things that they would do differently from the government if they had to manage a Budget of that size.
The government has already increased old age pensions by some 25%. That is costing the treasury a few billion each year, with in excess of 40,000 persons receiving this pension in a country of under 800,000 persons.
The AFC has long been calling for an audit of the names of those receiving old age pensions. Their former parliamentarian Sheila Holder was convinced that the pension roll was padded. She went to her grave convinced that all was not right with the pension list.
There is need to ensure that this roll does not contain persons who are not eligible for pensions. There is also a need, if future increases are to be sustainable, for some means test to be introduced before someone becomes eligible for old age pension. Should someone for example receiving NIS pension be eligible for old age pension?
This surely cannot be right, because old age pension is not a contributory scheme. Therefore there is no legal entitlement to old age pension. How can persons who receive a fat cheque each month from the NIS, as pension, still be eligible for old age pension, when this money could have been used to pay higher old age pensions to persons who are not in receipt of the NIS pension?
These are the issues upon which the public expects strident contributions from the opposition. The talk about cuts is a mere sideshow; it is the easy way out of the Budget debacle and it played right into the hands of the government on the last occasion.
It may happen again this year.
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