‘We cannot afford to cut the subventions to GPL and GuySuco’…Ali

MINISTER within the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, Mr. Norman Whittaker has also appealed to Opposition Members of Parliament MPs) to work together with the government and avoid cuts to the 2013 National Budget.

Speaking during the debate in the National Assembly on Monday, he said: “I implore all on the opposition side, come work with us, so that we can further reduce and remove the pull and push factors that threaten to erode the opportunities we have created, and the gains we have made as a nation under the PPP/Civic Government.
“Together we can provide more goods, more services and more opportunities for all of our people,” Whittaker encouraged.
He emphasised that Budget 2013 arose out of government’s commitments to the Guyanese people, with whose support they have been able not only to overcome the challenges of the “hostile political climate” of the post November 2011 elections, but also to have the budgetary reductions restored.
Whittaker said those challenges only served to intensify their resolve as a people, their efforts as a political party and as a government to ensure that the wheels of progress continued to turn.
“Those of us who not only read but study the budget would recognise, would realise that the wheels of progress have been turning all along, perhaps too fast for some of us,” he posited.

Best contribution
The minister implored the opposition MPs to support Budget 2013 as, according to him, it is the best contribution they can make at this time to further development.
“I exhort the opposition: do not go down the road of budget cuts again, there is obviously no need to do so, no need at all. Guyana’s economy is doing well, revenues continue to increase perennially and, consequently, more resources are available to provide more goods and services to our people,” he asserted.
Whittaker, alluding to improvements in all sectors, such as education, health care, housing, roads and other infrastructural developments, which, he said, have touched urban, rural and hinterland areas as well, stated that Guyana is a nation on the rise and people are enjoying a better standard of living today than they did two decades ago.
Nevertheless, while acknowledging that the government has not done all that needs to be done, he maintained that progress is not only measured in terms of what is achieved, but “you have to examine the depths from where we started.”
He said the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government has, significantly, reduced poverty, achieved universal primary education, come very close to achieving universal secondary education and provided housing for thousands of people, moreso, some very young people.
Whittaker added that the government has, again, put together, in collaboration with the people of Guyana, another budget that enjoys the unanimous support of a significant majority of the population.
“Opportunities were provided to all Guyanese who came forward and advanced their views on what should be priority budgetary proposals for the 2013 budget; some chose not to see this consultation process as urgent and important, and hence they did not avail themselves to play a meaningful role in the determination of the basket of measures and interventions that have gone in the 2013 budget,” he noted.
These “anti-working class opportunists” are now seeking to undo the results of what is a democratic consultative process, the minister declared.
He insisted that Guyana has achieved impressive financial growth, compared to what is happening in the Caribbean, South America and other countries around the world.
Whittaker said one area that opposition members continuously refer to is Guyana’s US$1.7 billion debt but he observed that, this itself is a significant attainment in comparison to the US$2.1billion owed in 1992.

Glaring evidence
“...then there was nothing to show for the money borrowed, just a document that evidenced indebtedness, nothing to show. Today there is glaring evidence of the progress and development attained by this nation of ours with that money,” he argued.
Whittaker, noting further that the World Bank has predicted Guyana’s economy will grow some 5.6 percent in 2013, said that is premised on the fact that the country has a sound, consistent growth.
He added that budget 2013 channels government’s continuous focus on preserving the macro-economic stability that has been enjoyed by Guyanese over the past decades.
Whittaker explained that local government is part of the implementation of the measures that have been set in the 2013 budget, noting that $282M has been allocated to that sector.
He said that money is available to 65 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) at $3M each, totalling $195M and six municipalities getting a total of $65M.
The minister said those sums may not be adequate to satisfy all the needs, but do allow the local government organs and the people in the various communities across Guyana to have an opportunity to be part of the development that takes place there.
He also remarked that those local government bodies do not depend solely on subventions but also garner their own resources from rates and taxes and other sources such as market revenues.
Whittaker disclosed that in excess of $20B has been allocated to the Regional Democratic Councils (RDCs) of Regions 1 to 10 to assist in delivering goods and services countrywide under the various programmes, like education, health care and public works.
He admitted that there are some areas of weakness which need to be addressed and assured that the government has been working feverishly to address those.

THE Guyanese people, but more particularly the political opposition supporters, need to make a hard and objective analysis of the behaviour and performance of the parliamentary representatives of the opposition parties with the intention of determining whether these elected officials are genuinely committed to the interest of the nation or are more fundamentally interested in furthering their narrow political agenda, which borders on holding back progress and development.

A good start to this analysis is on the issue of the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. Defying convention in parliamentary democracies the opposition parties used their combined one-seat majority to hog both positions, which is perhaps unprecedented in the British Commonwealth and even further afield.
They then moved towards dominating the various parliamentary sectoral committees by not agreeing to a proportional formula based on the performance of each party at the national elections. Instead, opting for a formula based on the two opposition parties being treated as one, even though they contested the elections as individual entities.
Their next move was to cut expenditure substantially in several sectors of last year’s budget which threatened the livelihood of hundreds of workers in the public sector.
The government rightfully took the matter to the court which ruled that it was unconstitutional for the opposition to cut sections of the budget and that they could only reject the budget in its entirety.
Despite the ruling by the court we are hearing during budget 2013 deliberations once again about cutting sections of it. This clearly demonstrates the opposition’s disregard, disrespect and contempt of the ruling of the court. Where else in the world a court ruling is totally ignored?
But this behaviour by the opposition is not surprising, because one of the opposition parties in particular, has a history and a penchant for engaging in lawlessness. It will be recalled that this party when it was in power under its infamous paramountcy of the party doctrine, flew its flag over the court buildings in Guyana. In addition, Guyanese would recall the mayhem, terror and destruction they unleashed at different periods of our history when things did not go their way. So this crass disregard for a ruling by the court is nothing new.
Therefore, Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney General, Anil Nandlall was spot on in his presentation in the National Assembly when he declared that the combined opposition is merely seeking out a “political orgasm,” and added that to cut the budget will not harm government but rather the people of Guyana.
Nandlall told the House that even before the presentation of the estimates to the House; the opposition had regrettably announced plans to cut the budget.
“I get the feeling that by cutting the budget, they feel that they will hurt the government…if they intend to cut the budget to hurt the government, that is not what they are doing, they are hurting the Guyanese people,” he declared.
He said that when the opposition speaks on the budget, their intentions speak to “putting us in a state of anti-development.”
The presentations by opposition parliamentarians during the budget debate lacked substance and credibility and contained some mind-boggling and unbelievable statements with one of them dismissing the problems of sugar workers as the government’s problem and describing subsidies to GUYSUCO and GPL as situations of “black holes.”
Another opposition parliamentarian also went on to make a most outrageous, disrespectful and incomprehensible statement that the “Rupununi is the most backward place in the Caribbean.”
Their latest cynical move is to delay the vote on the budgetary estimates until next week by which time they would have replaced Mr. Richard Allen and restore their combined one-seat majority so that they could institute their useless chopping block.
The time is therefore now ripe for opposition supporters to decide in an honest manner whether their elected representatives are truly carrying out the mandate entrusted to them.