The government has avoided “meaningful” engagement with the opposition on the budget for a second year running, Shadow Finance Minister Carl Greenidge is declaring, while also accusing members of his own party—the PNCR—of aiding a campaign of ‘half-truths’ to blame him for stalling the tripartite talks.
With the budget due to be laid in the National Assembly before the end of the month, Greenidge says the meetings between the government and the opposition so far have been slight and proposals from both APNU and the AFC have not seen any significant replies.
Although President Donald Ramotar had announced that Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh would be inviting the opposition—which has a combined parliamentary majority whose votes would be needed for the budget’s passage—for talks, Greenidge has accused the minister of not trying for meaningful consultations.
“Whatever may have been Mr Ramotar’s intention, the minister, as was the case in 2012 never sought to have meaningful discussions. What is it that can be solved in the last two weeks of March that could not have been discussed in November and December? The answer is nothing at all,” Greenidge writes in a letter appearing in today’s Sunday Stabroek.
Greenidge suggests that rather than seek meaningful consultations with the opposition on the budget, Singh would seek to break the laws “behind the smokescreen” that he says has been provided by the decision of the Chief Justice in the budget’s case. “The pursuit of these lawless ways by the government is not only facilitated by this incomplete, not to put too fine a point on it, decision, but by the behaviour of members of the PNC,” he also laments.
Singh, he notes, has been taking advantage of “malicious press reports” about his absence. “Even as the malicious material was being spread, the Chief Whip and [APNU Chairman David] Granger were in communication with me about additional material needed for those who were preparing to speak in the course of the FM&A Act debate. The APNU has three MPs assigned to Finance and Planning matters. My absence therefore would not affect the capacity of the APNU to attend meetings or to pass on a reply to an invitation,” he points out, while saying the main political parties “are hijacked in pursuit of ambitious personal agendas.”
Greenidge previously waged campaigns against Granger to be the presidential candidate and later leader for the PNCR, which is APNU’s main constituent and his letter points to continuing tensions in the party.
‘Fabricated’
The letter came almost a week after Singh said he had been waiting since the end of last month for a follow-up meeting to be scheduled between the government and opposition. He blamed Greenidge, who he claimed pulled out of a planned meeting and failed to indicate when he would be available.
But Greenidge says the rescheduled talks were never hinged on his own availability and is debunking online reports which suggested that he was the cause of the hold-up of the talks.
Greenidge explains that he notified Singh that the date originally proposed for the follow-up meeting clashed with the scheduled meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, which he chairs and of which the minister would have been aware. The opposition, he says, also needed additional time to reproduce and read the pile of documents the minister provided, which amounted to over 100 pages. “He was clearly told therefore that either [Lance] Carberry or I would contact him regarding an alternative date. So my unavailability never entered the equation,” he notes, adding that at no point did they discuss his personal availability and emphasising that the question of his giving a commitment “is fabricated.” “The briefing note considered and approved by the APNU for these negotiations catered for the attendance at meetings to be determined on the basis of the specifics to be discussed since much of the work should have involved varied details and sectors. I would therefore have been foolhardy to suggest that the meetings be only held if I were present,” he points out, while saying that it is not for the minister to determine who speaks on behalf of APNU of the majority of the parties.
‘Little time’
According to Greenidge, prior to this week’s session, held in his absence, only two tripartite meetings were scheduled and held by Singh in the three months since the President announced that he would be inviting the opposition for talks. “Nothing happened for two months after we submitted the information the opposition agreed to prepare,” he writes, while noting that the second meeting was hurriedly convened after he had publicly questioned the seriousness of the government and the usefulness of the meetings. “Little time has been left for discussions and the ministry seemed to be in the process of concluding its preparations for the reading of the budget itself, anyway. This short window casts a shadow over the utility of future meetings,” he adds, while saying there can be “no substantive discussions” between now and that date since the discussions to date have been meetings about meetings. There is nothing on which to build, he argues.
According to Greenidge, the documents APNU and AFC provided addressed proposed goals of the budget and suggestions about the policies that could achieve the goals. “In addition, we raised the need to discuss and find solutions to obvious problems on the horizon such as the burgeoning internal and external debt, inadequate pensions, low incomes and productivity and the need for an NIS rescue as well as the failure to deal with key contentious political issues such as public sector salaries, corruption, pollution and unemployment, around which a tripartite compact could be fashioned,” he points.
However, he says that APNU paper and AFC letter have elicited “no meaningful comment or proposals” from the government side. The “voluminous documentation” that the minister provided to the opposition, he adds, were largely old policy documents pre-dating 2012 and in some cases 2006 and before. “Nothing has been said about the report of the tax reform team which the President fobbed us off with last year when the public outcry against the VAT became deafening. The areas raised by the opposition for discussion or on which we sought explanations and assurances have not been addressed in the spirit or in keeping with the agreement to set in train a set of meaningful discussions over time to which the government would reply,” he says.
Following the government’s challenge to budget cuts last year by the opposition, acting Chief Justice Ian Chang in an interim ruling said that the National Assembly did not have the power to instituted cuts but upheld the budget that was passed since the president had already assented to the Appropriation Bill for it.
Greenidge says that the decision, which he deemed astonishing, is to the effect that the House has no powers to amend budgets submitted to it for review and consideration. “If that decision stands there would be no point in bringing the budget to the House save for information, in which case it might suffice to put on the internet, a much less expensive exercise,” he writes. The opposition has indicated that it would appeal the decision.
