Power: By any means necessary

Executive prerogative
David Granger and the APNU sound like the proverbial “broken record”. (Incidentally, do young folks nowadays know what’s a broken “record”? It’s like a scratched CD! – Just keeps repeating a line most annoyingly!) They’re back whining that they ought to be on a “Tripartite Budget Committee” to craft the budget.
Can you believe this ‘eye pass’? Who do they think they’re fooling? What is a budget? It represents in a “dollar-and-cents” sense, the vision of the executive being implemented – based on the resources available to it. That’s what an executive is all about. APNU’s power grab is just that – a power grab! How in heck will the electorate be in a position to judge which party to put into the executive at the next elections, unless the present one gets a chance to ‘put its money where its mouth is’? The opposition keeps harping on the U. S. Congress’ input into their budgetary process. Well, bully for them… even as they’ve become the crassest example of horse trading ever. To buy gain the congressional votes – even from his own party members – the U. S. president has to dole out boondoggles to every district in the country. The consequence is a bloated budget with little relevance to national priorities.
This is what our opposition wants: to get their grub by little fingers on the national treasury so they can feed at the public trough, at taxpayers’ expense. Their job is to scrutinise the budget when the executive presents it – in Parliament, not in some back room – and announce what they find objectionable. If what they say makes sense, the electorate will be willing to give them a shot at the executive at the next elections.
Another underhanded way the opposition has been trying to sneak into power through the backdoor, has been trying to place their projects on the national agenda.
This is a no-no in our system: the opposition cannot initiate any bill that will call for spending from the Consolidated Fund! But there’s a method to the opposition’s apparent madness in their stuck-record routine. Revelling in their seizure of absolute control of the speakership and all committees in Parliament with their one-seat majority, they intend to pull the same stunt if a “Tripartite Budget Committee” is ever formed to craft the budget.
The president should stick to his guns, and at best, have the opposition send some representatives to make suggestions to the government’s budget team. Don’t let the Trojan Horse inside the walls!!!
Encouraging anarchy
Even before the smoke had dissipated from the fires the Linden protests had spawned, a government minister announced that it would “rebuild” the gutted structures. So, here we have it: in addition to the foregoing, government workers will be paid for the time they were on ‘strike’. Their ‘strike’, of course, had nothing to do with working conditions, but everything to do with making up numbers in the protests that illegally blocked all traffic into the interior.
We’ll pass over all the other concessions that have been made over these blatant acts of holding the government to ransom. Unless we get Demands X, Y and Z… we burn!! Some may call this domestic terrorism, as defined by the law on the books.
Now we have the works minister asking ‘excuse’ for not starting the rebuilding process: he’s still “reviewing” the damage. We think the rebuilding should come from the Region 10 budget and that the latter be allowed to collect a one-off tax on residents to accomplish this process.