Dear Editor,
I have noted the spate of reports in the press apportioning blame for the stalled tripartite 2013 Budget talks. Dr Singh in his GINA statement of March 11th (and carried in ‘i-news’) has correctly indicated that I notified him that February 28th would not be convenient for the next meeting. His statement was however incomplete and deliberately misleading. My two pieces of communication to him made three points: first, the date he proposed clashed with the scheduled meeting of the Public Accounts Committee. That standing arrangement should have been known to him.
Secondly, we needed additional time to reproduce and read the pile of documents he provided. There were over 100 pages including tables.
He was clearly told therefore that either Mr Carberry or I would contact him regarding an alternative date. So my unavailability never entered the equation. Contrary to the allegation in the paper, at no point did we discuss my personal availability so the question of me giving a commitment in that regard is fabricated. It is not for the Minister to determine who speaks on behalf of the APNU let alone the Majority Parties. 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. The statements attributed to the Minister in ’i-news’ therefore, including two which read, ‘the Minister…asked Mr. Greenidge to inform him as soon as possible when he would be available. Mr. Greenidge undertook to do so. ……Government continues to await Mr. Greenidge’s advice on when he will make himself available for these important discussions…”, are a joke!! They are seeking to take advantage of the mis-information concerning my whereabouts.
More importantly, since March 6th the Minister has received a letter from the AFC Leader, Mr Ramjattan, indicating that that the AFC will no longer participate in the talks. Up to this day the Minister has not informed APNU of his receipt of that letter. The withdrawal of one member from tripartite talks is a serious matter and leaves no forum. It is therefore disingenuous of the Minister to suggest that he was awaiting some word from me in order to convene the next round of meetings. But, then what is new? Half truths are par for the course under this PPP Government.
The other point carried in the ‘i-news’ report to the effect that “several meetings had been held” with the Ministry of Finance is also palpably false and I would not like to think that an accountant would call two meetings ‘several’. Prior to this week’s session held in my absence, only two tripartite meetings were scheduled and held by the Minister in the three months since the President announced that the Minister would be inviting us for talks. Nothing happened for two months after we submitted the information the Opposition agreed to prepare. That second meeting was hurriedly convened after I pointed out, during a press conference, that there had to be some doubt about the seriousness of the Government’s intentions and the usefulness of such 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. The Budget has to be laid by 31st March. There can be no substantive discussions between now and that date since the discussions to date have been meetings about meetings! We have nothing on which to build.
The documents provided by the APNU and AFC concerned 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. That APNU paper and AFC letter have elicited no meaningful comment or proposals from the Government side. The voluminous documentation provided by the Minister, to which he sought a reaction in less than three days, are for the most part 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. Actually, where the matters have been addressed they seem facetious for the most part. The tables on goals and performance of the Ministries, for example, have been taken from one that has been contained unamended in the Estimates over the last five years.
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.
The Minister is actually banking on breaking the laws of Guyana behind the smokescreen provided by the astonishing preliminary decision of the Chief Justice in response to the pleadings of the Attorney General. That decision 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.
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.
The Minister is taking advantage of malicious press reports about my sudden unannounced disappearance. Along with the reports of the hold-up of talks by yours truly there is at least one report based on an anonymous interview to the effect that I am ‘unpredictable’, ‘missing’ probably abroad. Sounds familiar? In fact since the election of 2011 I have travelled abroad less than almost all members of the Front Bench. And, even as the malicious material was being spread, the Chief Whip and Mr 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.
A colleague of the late Henry Gill, pointed out in his tribute to that very talented and indefatigable Caribbean public servant that frequently the region not only shoots itself in the foot but in the head! The same may be said of our main political parties as they are hijacked in pursuit of ambitious personal agendas.
Yours faithfully,
Carl Greenidge
