Failure to gazette new Gov’t Ministries stalls budget considerations

Consideration of the 2015 budget estimates was snagged in hours of controversy yesterday after the opposition PPP/C argued that the government had violated its own recently passed laws relative to constitutional agencies and the new ministries which were created following the May general elections.

Amid high drama and a flurry of meetings between the two sides, the arguments by the opposition severely delayed what was supposed to be a 9 am start to assuage concerns over the constricting of the consideration of estimates to three days. At 8 pm yesterday, the Chairman of the Committee of Supply and Speaker, Barton Scotland made an announcement for the way forward in an exhausting day that also saw separate press conferences by the PPP/C and the APNU+AFC government to present their sides.

Scotland’s announcement said that the Committee of Supply will today commence consideration of the 2015 Budget Estimates as the Finance Ministry will immediately issue an order to be gazetted and to take effect from August 22, 2015 allowing for a modification of the Schedule of the Fiscal Management and Accountability (FMAA) (Amendment) Act 2015 to add the new ministries. It will also place all the Constitutional Agencies on a single table.

After a four-hour delay, the opposition proceeded in the afternoon with questioning the government over various line item allocations in the budget. All the while, members of the PPP/C aggressively opposed the ongoing considerations as they stated that the treatment of the Constitutional Agencies was unconstitutional and in violation of the government’s own FMAA (Amendment) Act of 2015.

Scotland’s announcement last night said that that on behalf of the opposition, MP and former Attorney General, Anil Nandlall had written a letter to him expressing concern over the present construct of the 2015 Budgetary Estimates. After a meeting facilitated by the Speaker between the Government and the Opposition, it “was agreed to amend the estimates as follows, Constitutional Bodies which are currently found in various parts of the Estimates will be relocated. All of the Constitutional Agencies will be placed in a single table in which their allocations will be reflected as a lump sum allocation of both Current and Capital Expenditures,” He stated.

The Chairman noted that the table formerly titled subsidies and contributions to local organisations will now be disaggregated into local organisations only and subventions to Constitutional Agencies.

The constitutional agencies which were affected by the government blunder were the Chamber of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Judicial Service Commission, the Public Service Commission, the Police Service Commission, the Teaching Service Commission, the Public Service Appellate Tribunal, the Public Procurement Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Guyana Elections Commission, the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Parliament Office, the Rights Commissions and the Ethnic Relations Commission.

Further, the FMMA will be modified to add the Ministry of the Presidency, Ministry of Communities, Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Ministry of Social Protection, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Business. While the house considered the estimates for the Office of the President it was not until consideration began for the Ministry of the Presidency that members of the PPP/C contested moving further as the Ministry does not legally exist as yet.

Nandlall in a press briefing along with Chief Whip Gail Teixeira and Juan Edghill after midday yesterday said that the government had to admit its errors and take immediate action to fix the Estimates or the entire budget would need to be scrapped. He had stated in his letter to Scotland that due to the violation of the two acts both passed in the 11th Parliament “portions of the Estimates or the Estimates in their entirety may be unlawful, null, void, and of no effect.”

He said that the party’s contention lay in the fact that the schedule was not amended and that the new ministries named by the Granger administration were simply not a part of the architecture and were outside of the legal framework. Teixeira laced into the government and the Finance Minister, Winton Jordan calling the work and the presentation of the 2015 Budget Estimates incompetent.

She noted that the Constitution (Amendment) Act and the FMAA were both assented to by President David Granger a month prior to the August 10 Budget Presentation. She said it was ridiculous that the government was unable to be compliant with the first two pieces of legalisation proposed and passed by it in the 11th Parliament. She said there was more than ample time to apply the FMAA and add the plethora of new ministries.

Teixeira said that it was all the more alarming that the government showcased such negligence considering that the FMAA was first proposed in 2013 by then Shadow Finance Minister, now Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Greenidge who had lobbied extensively for the financial autonomy of a variety of constitutional agencies. She said that given the history of the legislation it was an unbelievable level of “incompetence” that would then allow for the Finance Minister to be so careless in placing constitutional bodies under a variety of headings when a provision was made specifically for these entities to be separated.

Scotland had told the Committee of Supply that by 16:00hrs yesterday the issue would be addressed. However that time came and went and it was not until after 20:00hrs that an announcement was read by him as to what came out of the lengthy meeting between the two sides.

In a press briefing immediately after the PPP/C’s yesterday afternoon, Greenidge admitted to the government mistakes but tried to downplay the issue noting that it was a far cry from a constitutional crisis. He said that the opposition informed the government that a couple of the constitutional agencies had not been “fully shown in the estimates in the manner that had been set out in the Constitutional Amendment Bill and more importantly   the second Fiscal Management and Accountability Act”. Greenidge said that government has since decided that it will make the amendment and reflect same in a short resolution as had been done with the previous administration last year when “they had continued yet again to fail to meet the requirements of the constitution”.

Asked how the government could have made such a blunder, Greenidge acknowledged that they knew what had been proposed and the amendments which had been previously passed. “However as is usual with these things life is a little more complicated as it might otherwise appear   and in the course of preparing the tables themselves there were a couple of places where they weren’t properly reflected”, he said.

Moving forward during the Committee of Supply it was determined that there were no ministers of social cohesion, citizenship or natural resources and in fact no ministries either as they comprise only departments in the Ministry of the Presidency.

Up to press time last night, the two sides were considering heads under various ministries.