Describing the continued non-access by the opposition to the National Communica-tions Network (NCN) as “intolerable”, Opposition Leader David Granger yesterday stated that APNU will bring “sanctions against them [NCN] in the National Assembly.”
“We are deeply concerned and we would take further actions in the National Assembly,” Granger said yesterday when contacted for a comment.
Reiterating APNU’s position that it would not be participating in the “bogus” weekly debate that the television station hosts on corruption, Granger charged that NCN continues to deny the opposition access, pointing out that that was one of the reasons the budget was cut in Parliament.
On Saturday, Chairman of the Alliance For Change Nigel Hughes made a similar comment when he said that his party will consider other avenues to effect change to the state broadcaster and the Government Information Agency (GINA) since the subvention cuts seem to have done little to reform programming.
In the National Assembly last month, the opposition again voted against an allocation of $211.5 million for NCN and GINA. It also voted down the sum of $22.6 million for expenditure on wages and salaries for contracted employees under the Office of the President Presidential Advisory and other services.
The government had taken the matter to court and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon said on Wednesday that the $1 that was approved by the opposition for the various agencies was totally inconsistent with the constitutional provision as ruled by the Chief Justice. “The Constitution says for a maximum of four months every year in the absence of a budget, the Finance Minister could withdraw from the Contingency Fund, wages and salaries, whatever it takes to run the government,” he said, while explaining how money was found to pay the workers.
“The provision of a $1, the Chief Justice ruled was clearly inconsistent with that provision in the law so the Finance Minister did what the law provided for and made the money available to meet those expenditures,” he said. It is unclear if these workers will be paid for the rest of the year.
In April, the opposition effected over $20 billion in cuts from the budget, citing a lack of transparency and accountability in the explanations for the allocations. The government later moved to restore the amounts through an action in the High Court. Although finding that the National Assembly did not have the power to cut the budget, acting Chief Justice Ian Chang in July, in an interim ruling, said the court could not restore the funds, except for allocations to the Ethnic Relations Commission, which is a constitutional agency and entitled to draw directly from the Consolidated Fund.
