| By Ralph Seeram,There are not going to be any snap elections, not for this year anyhow. The budget battle is over, at least for the Opposition. They had their fun; it was their opportunity to show “we gat power” with their one seat majority in Parliament. The problem is other than their ego, the Opposition will be hard pressed to demonstrate to the Guyanese what they have really achieved by cutting $31B from the budget.I am curious to know what’s going to happen to that $31B. Obviously, the Finance Minister must have catered to receive that sum in revenues, grants or a combination of both. So what’s going to happen to those Billions of dollars? I did not hear the Opposition suggest an alternative use for the sums chopped from the budget. Will it sit in the treasury idle, not generating any economic activity?That $31B which represents approximately 15 per cent of the entire budget is a huge amount to deprive the Guyanese economy, quite a lot of jobs could have been generated from that sum of money. So my question again is what is going to happen to the money cut.Mind you,Cheap Jerseys 2018, I am again assuming that Ashni Singh catered to receive that $31B in revenue. I assume that he did not cater to spend what he doesn’t have. I would have thought that the opposition would have tried to divert those sums to let the Guyanese taxpayer be a direct beneficiary of the saving, like reducing VAT on certain consumer items, increase services or something that can benefit the taxpayers directly.Now the door is open for the government to make the argument and tell the people of Linden their electricity can’t be subsidized because the Opposition has cut it out from the budget.Now I am recalling Speaker Trotman saying that the Opposition can only cut, they can’t add. Now what kind of nonsense is that? Trotman is a confused man, and he has only increased the confusion further over who has power over the budget.Really speaking, it is confusion all over the place over this budget. The Opposition say they have the power to add or reduce the budget, Trotman said they can only cut, the Government says Opposition can’t cut anything because the Government has the right to present its budget. Anil ran to the court; the court said the Opposition can only cut entire budget or approve it as a whole; Trotman says that the court has no jurisdiction over what happens in parliament, and the circus continues.With so many lawyers in both the government and Opposition side you would think they would get it straight, at least for the sake of the Guyanese taxpayer, who is now more confused. DeHammer Benn is also confused on why they chopped $5B from his allocation. Now here is a man accustomed to “hammer he way”, whether the receivers are road side squatters or the Government radio station, however he did not cater for Granger chainsaw. He is still in shock, just like the squatters.I am no constitutional lawyer, but any man in the street will tell you that if two people can’t decide what’s right you have to go to somebody to decide. Trotman is in denial if he thinks he doesn’t have a constitutional crisis. Anything that pertains to the constitution the courts have jurisdiction, the courts have already ruled at least preliminary that the Opposition can’t cut parts of the budget. So where do we go from here?The PPP Government will, like they did last year, ignore the cuts and still go on spending the money based on the court’s ruling and there is little the Opposition can do.I am just reading that the Government has agreed to a tripartite committee to study next year’s budget. President Donald Ramotar should be complimented on this move; that’s how it should be. After all, if you are asking the Opposition to approve spending taxpayers’ money, then they should be involved, even though I agree with the government that it is their right to craft the budget.Moving to a different subject I noticed the death this week of an old friend and seasoned journalist, Neville Annibourne. I will always remember Neville, because it was through Annibourne that I entered the field of journalism. It was in 1971; Guyana had three leading newspapers– the Evening Post & Sunday Argosy, the Guyana Chronicle and the Guyana Graphic. I had the distinction of working for all three but that’s a story for another day.Neville was the Berbice correspondent for the Evening Post & Sunday Argosy. He was being transferred to Georgetown. We interviewed over “drinks” and my journalism career started as his replacement. Some background on him has been given in the press, and how he survived the Jonestown massacre, but Guyanese need to know that Neville Annibourne was a freedom fighter in the early days when Guyana was fighting to free itself from colonialism. And for whatever it is worth, he was one of the few prominent Afro Guyanese in the old days of the PPP.As you are reading this, I am in Guyana enjoying some fresh fry fish and labba and mosquito. This evening I will be attending the wedding of Damion and the beautiful Kavita, to them I wish the very best in their future bliss together.Ralph Seeram can be reached at Email: [email protected] |
