This year, the Administration allocated $9.3 billion to the security sector compared to $4.6B in 2006. This is a lot of money. But how deep has been the debate about how this money will be expended and how it will improve public safety?
Even as the budget debate was taking place, the usual lawlessness was occurring all over the place but such news seemed not to have penetrated the prepared speeches of the members of the National Assembly.
There were fatal accidents on Mandela Avenue, Georgetown, at Burnham Drive, Wismar, Linden and on the Number 53 Public Road on the Corentyne Coast; a man and his son were charged with smuggling illegal fuel on the West Coast Berbice; a gold miner was chopped to death at Arimu on the Cuyuni River; a fire tender crashed, a water pump blew out while a house was burning at Melanie Damishana; businessmen were robbed in Ruimveldt and No. 79 Village, Corentyne and fishermen were robbed and tortured on the Essequibo Coast; Trinidad’s Organised Crime, Narcotics and Firearms Bureau reported another seized of cocaine shipped from Guyana, and much more.
None of these everyday crimes entered the budget debate on security. Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee studiously avoided thorny serious crimes about which his Ministry has done little – especially back-tracking from well-known ‘ports’; trafficking in young women in the hinterland; fire prevention and the rehabilitation of fire hydrants; increased police killings; prison reform and the rehabilitation of shaky prisons; maritime piracy and the provision of boats for the river police; and interdiction of narcotics smuggling and the state of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit.
Instead, the minister iterated many of the trite promises made by his predecessors every year since the start of the new millennium. How frequently over the past seven years has the Administration promised such novelties as banning loud music in public transport; introducing a witness protection scheme; creating special units to deal with victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and carnal knowledge; creation of a SWAT team; the issuance of a new set of traffic tickets; and establishing a state-of-the-art forensic laboratory?
Budget debates, such as the one in February, should provide an opportunity for members of the National Assembly to discuss government policy and to assist them to reach informed decisions on the Administration’s financial plans for the coming year. They should be dynamic and lively discussions in which members rigorously anatomize budget proposals and vigorously respond to the points made by other speakers rather than reading out sterile, set-piece speeches. Debates should be lively occasions with members intervening to challenge, or concur with, what others say. Most important, though, members must use debates to articulate the interests of their constituents. These things just did not happen.
The public safety spokesman for the Alliance for Change party, for example, while acknowledging the occurrence of the horrible East Bank massacres and the East Coast murders which included the assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeow Sawh, seemed to be more concerned with commending the “good work” of former Minister of Home Affairs Gail Teixeira during whose tenure these crimes took place and in congratulating the current Minster for the assumed “decrease in criminal activities” without actually citing numbers or identifying those criminal activities.
This was no debate at all; there was no speaking up for constituents, no querying of expenditure and no demands to curb abuses. No explanations were sought and none was given. In closing the debate, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh said he found it difficult to take criticisms of the budget seriously, confessing that he got the feeling that opposition parliamentarians did not have much to comment on in the budget and so they spent a lot of time raising baseless arguments.
Dr Singh was not wrong. The public deserves better.