PPP/C and Jagdeo return to Parliament

Former President Bharrat Jagdeo

…debate on Budget 2015 begins

The People’s Progressive Party/Civic, led by former President Bharrat Jagdeo, is expected to take up its 32 seats in Parliament, as the legislative body resumes for the 2015 Budget debate expected to begin today.

The PPP/C, which had not attended any sittings of the 11th Parliament since it began, had told media operatives that it would return to the National Assembly when the time arrived for the debate of the first budget presented by the new Administration.

Former President Jagdeo had recently said that the role of the PPP/C would be to hold the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change coalition Government to account: to push it to fulfil its promises while ensuring that the legacy of the PPP/C was preserved. He stressed that the new Opposition would not act like APNU and the AFC did in the years after 2011 and try to stymie development.

The new Opposition Leader on Monday after the presentation of the Budget themed “a fresh approach to the good life in a green economy” blasted the APNU/AFC Administration and more so the Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, for presenting a number of the PPP/C’s initiatives and plans in hopes of making the public believe that these are initiatives of the APNU/AFC.

Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo

Jagdeo, in a brief press statement moments after the budget presentation, accused Minister Jordan of being “lengthy in generality” and having “lofty goals” in his budget speech.

Jordan had used most of his presentation to attack the previous PPP/C Government while articulating his Government’s plan to develop the country over the next five years under a new brand of governance that would hopefully augur well for all Guyanese.

Among the measures announced by Jordan were the transfers of billions of dollars to the rice and sugar industries as bailouts to meet the operating costs and debt incurred by those industries; the raising of the Public Sector minimum wage to $50,000; the relaxation of taxes for some mining equipment and commodities; promises to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic State procedures, and hikes in Old Age Pensions and public assistance along with the return of subventions for trade union bodies.

With the PPP/C and the APNU/AFC Government already having publicly attacked each other on the 2015 National Budget outside of the National Assembly, the public anticipates a long-awaited ‘showdown’ in Parliament today.