Opposition missed chance for serious debate – finance minister

By Reuben Stoby

Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh

Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, wrapping up the budget debate for 2011 in the National Assembly on Wednesday, said that the members of the opposition missed a perfect opportunity to contribute in a more meaningful way to the budget debate, as they chose to divert from serious issues that would have made for a better debate.

According to Singh, the opposition members were also “inconsistent and incoherent” in their presentations, which showed that there was disunity among them. “The budget debate provides an incomparable opportunity (to contribute in a more meaningful way), and there are a few other occasions…for both sides to assess global developments and how they affect the environment, the macro-economic stance adopted by government, and the opportunity to proffer policy stance that we might adopt…”

Singh said that such contributions were missing from the opposition, who chose to offer a “mockery assemblage of belligerently incoherent, inconsistent and opportunistic misrepresentation” of elements of the budget. The finance minister singled out opposition members Khemraj Ramjattan and Sheila Holder for misinforming the house by referring to documents that were not authentic or appropriate to their arguments. He added that certain arguments needed specialist expertise to lend support.

Singh added that an observation was made that the opposition members were at one time arguing that the budget was an elections budget and only offered goodies for the people, and then they subsequently stated that the budget hadn’t anything for the people.

This, he said, was a contradiction to their arguments. Arguments on the lifting of the income tax threshold, Singh said, were also inconsistent and showed that the opposition could not make up their minds on it.

“This speaks of an opposition in disarray. There was no common internal debate on issues…no common agreed position to defend… you are more confused than when you started… is important that the nation view these responses so that people could see and draw their own conclusions. I thank the members of the opposition for disclosing their state of affairs in this house”.

Noting that he didn’t want to go point by point to correct misrepresentations by the opposition, as he would have to go on for long periods and didn’t want to incur the wrath of his colleagues or the Speaker of the House, Singh said there were a few presentations that he needed to address.

He said the opposition’s claims that old age pension was only addressed because it is an election year, and that it was not addressed in the past 18 years, was boldly inaccurate, since it was last increased in 2008 even when it was not an election year. Singh said it was also now easier to get old age pension, since a person just has to prove his age.

“We never said that it was going to meet all their needs. It is an unrequited transfer and (is) non-contributory in nature…a unilateral transfer from (the) public purse to elderly Guyanese.” Pensioners, he said, also have their water bills paid by government. On the argument by the opposition that the budget was prepared without consultation, Singh said it was not by accident that the presence of the word ‘together’ is the first word of the budget theme.

Singh said, too, that Opposition Leader Robert Corbin, in his presentation, chose to dismiss and treat as irrelevant views expressed by important stakeholders on the budget. He said the positive words of the Private Sector Commission, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, and even FITUG, on various aspects of the budget should have been taken into consideration, but Corbin chose not to, since it would not have been politically expedient so to do.

On the treatment of demarcation of Amerindian lands and the opposition’s claims that such a task predated 1992, Singh said that before it was amended, the Amerindian Act did not provide for ownership of the lands by the Amerindians, since their lands could have been taken away at any time. “In 1991, grants were made to 72 communities, but no demarcation was done and the boundaries of the grants were never defined. Since 1992, government has spent more than a quarter (of a) billion dollars demarcating Amerindian lands, and has also granted additional titles.”

Dr Singh said that Amerindians now own some 14 per cent of Guyana’s landmass, as against only about six per cent before 1992. “Corbin sought to suggest that the budget would be placed in a weak foundation; and if so, (it) will sink, and that the economic condition will continue to be on shaky grounds. I say that the economic foundation has never been stronger, and the budget is as solid as a rock!” Singh declared.