Shadow Finance Minister Carl Greenidge will not be attending a proposed meeting between the government and opposition tomorrow to discuss this year’s budget, since he is yet to be convinced that the administration is interested in anything more than a public relations show.
Speaking to the Stabroek News last evening, Greenidge accused Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh of mischief for suggesting that he was the one to blame for delaying the meetings, when no attempt had been made by the government to fix one for more than two months. The budget must be presented to the National Assembly no later than March 30, 2012 and must be passed no later than April 29, 2012.
Singh, in a Government Information Agency (GINA) issued statement, said that on Monday March 5, 2012, he wrote the representatives of the various parliamentary parties inviting them to discussions on March 7, 2012, on economic matters, including the budget. Singh’s letter was sent one day after Stabroek News reported that Greenidge was yet to receive a response from him more than a month after writing him about the meeting.
According to GINA, the Minister received a response from AFC’s Gerhard Ramsaroop asking for a minor shift in time and shortly thereafter received a correspondence from APNU’s Winston Jordan asking for a shift in the date to the following week, on account of Greenidge’s unavailability.
“The Minister further stated that, in response to Jordan’s request sent on Greenidge’s behalf, he promptly proposed an alternative date in the following week, to which the AFC representatives and Jordan from APNU have since confirmed their availability. As it currently stands, Carl Greenidge is still to confirm his availability,” the GINA release said, adding that a postponement of the meeting was requested on Greenidge’s behalf but he was still to respond to the Minister’s proposal for a revised date.
“It is clearly misleading to suggest that no efforts have been made by the government to convene the meeting, and extremely alarming that one week after the invitation had been issued that Mr. Granger is still unaware of the invitation and labouring under the misconception that efforts have not been made to convene these discussions,” GINA said. Singh, meanwhile, emphasised that the government is looking forward to consultative discussions with the opposition representatives and to receiving their views. He added that the government may have no choice but to proceed with the other opposition representatives if Greenidge continues to be unavailable.
‘Flight from the truth’
“It is a fabrication. It is not true,” said Greenidge, responding to Singh. “I am not inclined to attend that meeting. But I will attend the [other meeting in the tripartite arrangement] on economic issues,” he added.
Greenidge took the position that time does not permit any meaningful discussions on the budget. He said that in his letter to the Minister, he had requested some information and also suggested an agenda for consideration by the Minister. He said that none of these two requests received a favourable response. “He gave me no information [nor] did he consider the agenda,” said Greenidge.
Recounting the history of the engagement, Greenidge said that after the three parties agreed to hold meetings on the budget, on December 31, 2011, President Donald Ramotar “told me that he instructed [Dr. Singh] to convene the meeting.”
“The first time that I got any reaction from the Minister about the meeting was on March 5th, for a March 7th meeting. I never personally asked for a deferral of the meeting,” he said. He noted that Jordan communicated the fact that he (Greenidge) would not have been available for the March 7th meeting.
“For you to have three months to fix a meeting and then to fix one [and notify persons two days before] is a flight from the truth,” Greenidge said, adding that it was mischievous for the minister to suggest that he was the reason that meetings were not held.
He expressed a concern for the short time left before the presentation of the national budget by the end of the month. “For you to fix a meeting on March 15 suggests that you are not serious. In my mind, it is just a PR exercise. They can’t even provide the information that we asked for. I say that we could have made better use of the time had he provided the information we asked for. I also asked [for him to] consider a draft agenda [for the meeting]. He has reacted to neither,” Greenidge said.
AFC member Ramsaroop also accused Singh of painting a wrong picture as it relates to the convening of a meeting, noting that the government had since the end of December, 2011 to come to the table with the members of the opposition on the budget.
“The PPP/C are playing games. They are taking long to convene this [meeting],” he told Stabroek News, adding that blaming Greenidge for the meeting not taking place is a deliberate attempt to mislead.
“We were asking for a meeting since December. It so happened that the meeting arranged was bad for Greenidge,” he said. He added that the Minister should not blame the situation wholly on Greenidge when the opposition wanted to meet weeks ago, even suggesting that they met on a Sunday to get the consultations going.
