THE AFC’s WINDMILLS

 
There is a new tailor in town! One that is so excited that there is a hurried readiness to make the cut even before the measurements are known.
The details of Budget 2013 are not yet public; the Budget itself may still be in a state of preparation. Yet even before the Budget has been presented to the National Assembly, the AFC is announcing that it will institute cuts to the document.
Apart from the fact that the AFC is announcing that it will cut even before knowing what the document contains, it has escaped their memory that the Chief Justice has ruled that the opposition has no power to cut to the Budget. They can reject or approve the estimates, but not cut.
The fact that the AFC is already flaying with its scissors in hand is an indication of the approach that it intends to once again bring to the Budget negotiation process. It is signaling that even before it knows what is contained in the Budget, there will be cuts.
The AFC is signaling its usual policy of aggression against the government. It is stuck in the mode of confrontational politics.
This nation must never forget what was averted last year before the Chief Justice’s ruling. The AFC had decided that it would cut in excess of three billion dollars from certain ministries. If those cuts had been carried out it would have returned Guyana to the dark days of retrenchment and seen the entire sports programme of the government being shut down.
Fortunately, APNU did not go along with these tactics and voted for the approval of the estimates for those ministries which the AFC so recklessly wanted to decapitate.
Yet, after the Budget was passed with amendments, it turned out that the allocations for the health sector were passed unaltered and when the controversial contract for the payment of drugs to the public hospital was revealed by this newspaper, the same AFC turned around and asked who approved the expenditure of the procurement of the drugs, not realizing that the vote for the estimates for the hospital formed part of the unopposed appropriations that the opposition did not touch.
The AFC intends to chop the subvention from NCN as it did last year. It does not as yet know whether there will be a subvention, but it has signaled that it will cut.
It does not as yet know whether this subvention will be used to help subsidize the cost of international cricket and football to fans, but it has already decided that any subvention to NCN will be subject to cuts.
The approach by the AFC fails to betray a mindset of confrontation. The AFC sees itself as holding the balance of power between the government and APNU, and it is prepared to flex its muscles with threats about cuts without even seeking to engage in Budget negotiations, as opposed to pre- Budget consultations.
In light of the approach that it has taken regarding intended cuts, one has to question whether this is a reaction to the reception that it has had from the government during the consultations or whether it is all part of a strategy to become the spoiler, in terms of the passage of this year’s Budget.
As much as the AFC may have reservations about the seriousness with which the government is approaching the consultations with the opposition party, the majority that the combined opposition holds, allows its leverage in any negotiations.
As APNU has shown, real progress can be made in these negotiations. Last year APNU extracted significant concessions from the government during the negotiations, but allowed itself to be manipulated by the AFC, who effectively scuttled the outcome of those negotiations.
The AFC is a danger to itself and its hostile political stances are not helpful to the political cooperation and compromise. It may hope that by adopting this approach, it will make further inroads into APNU’s constituencies, but as a middle-class party it is only fooling itself, because the support that it obtains in future elections is not going to be determined by how much it can flex its political muscles, but the degree to which it can use these muscles to help push forward political cooperation and compromise.
Instead of waiving a scythe, it should be building political bridges. Instead of trying to cut the financial cloak on this nation, it should be darning the rips in the fabric.