It is evident from the outcome of the 2013 budget jousting that nothing has changed at many levels of engagement between the government and the opposition since the consideration of the 2012 edition and indeed since the ground-breaking election of November 28, 2011.
The government continues to moan about the inflicting of budget cuts by the opposition but the administration has offered no sign that it is prepared for an all-encompassing engagement in light of its loss of parliamentary control. Indeed, if anything, it has shown even greater recalcitrance.
The one issue that stands out is the fate of two bills from Parliament which emanated from the opposition benches and which were passed by virtue of their one-seat majority. The Fiscal Management and Accountability (Amendment) Bill was passed on January 10, 2013 and the Former Presidents’ Benefits and Other Facilities Bill was passed on January 25, 2013. To date these bills are still to be signed into law or rejected by the President. When he was asked at a press conference on Friday about the fate of the bills, the President’s response was disappointingly evasive.
He would only say “I haven’t seen the bills… I haven’t seen any of the bills”. This was remarkably similar to the line that had previously been adopted by his Attorney General Mr Nandlall. Given that President Ramotar was always acutely aware that opposition-majority bills would be landing on his desk for attention and given that he and his Attorney General are well cognizant that Article 170 of the Constitution defines a timeframe for repudiating bills with an implicit understanding that all legislation must be handled with dispatch, what is the public to make of this pretend game over the two bills? The only conclusion that can be drawn is that President Ramotar is prepared to defy the constitution, the supreme law of this country by not acting on the two bills. This is a dangerous course of action which reduces every single complaint by the executive against the opposition to pure hypocrisy and opportunism. It also evinces disrespect for the majority of voters who cast ballots in favour of the opposition and sets a very disturbing example. The President is the ultimate custodian of the constitution and given awareness of the passage of the bills over three months ago he should surely have sought to ensure that they were addressed within the strictures of the constitutional timeframe. How will the budget appropriations bill be signed into law? Will it suffer the same fate of not appearing on the desk of the President? How will the disparity in its treatment compared to the other two bills be explained?
It is now time for Speaker Trotman to assert himself in relation to the output from the House. He above all should be gravely concerned that the work of the legislature is being made a mockery of by the executive and should make this known to the President’s office. The legislature has had nearly 18 months to address matters like its own legal counsel, assistance to MPs in the drafting of legislation and the method of transmittal of legislation to the President’s office. These matters are certainly in the speaker’s remit and should be robustly addressed.
It is within this light that the slicing of allocations over the last week to some of the budgetary heads must be seen. The government continues to refuse to accept the consequences of the loss of parliamentary control and will yield no ground. One of the few options therefore available to the opposition is to apply cuts after asking questions. The chopping of the allocation to the Guyana Power and Light triggered interesting exchanges between its management and commentator, Mr Christopher Ram. After Mr Ram pointed out that the $1B which had been requested for GPL’s operations had been approved and therefore there should be no threat of a tariff increase as signalled by the utility, the management of the company said the additional sums were needed, among other things, for its loss reduction programme funded from several sources including the IDB and China’s Exim bank.
One of the drawbacks to any defence presented by the PPP/C is the length of time it has been in office uninterrupted. Increasingly its long tenure is a dire liability to any case it might attempt to present as in the case of GPL and also the state-owned GuySuCo. If combined, GPL’s line and commercial losses continue to hover in the 30% range after 20 years then no right-thinking person would continue to sink taxpayers’ dollars into attempting to rescue it. From the post-1992 days of GEC, the government had been criticized for making poor personnel choices. The company continued to perform disastrously leading to the difficult decision to privatize.
Prolonged talks and hardline positions from Mrs Jagan saw the eventual collapse of discussions with Sask Power of Canada and then a privatization deal being struck with CDC/ESBI who were to eventually give up the venture for $1 and cause the formation of GPL. Along the way and even prior to 1992, the IDB had sunk large amounts into improving the entity’s management and transmission and distribution network. Today the situation remains unsatisfactory. It is this defective and ineffective stewardship of the sector that has caused the budget cut to be made. GPL should be made to explain to the Economic Services Committee of Parliament in detail why it has not been able to bring down losses to an acceptable level and why the public should have any confidence in the ability of the present managers to turn it around, particularly in light of the significant Chinese debt that is being taken on. Once satisfactory answers are provided, supplementary appropriations can be brought before the House.
While agriculture evaded budget cuts, the entire country should be alarmed by what is happening in sugar. Here again, the government cannot avoid the responsibility for its poor performance. Over 20 years, it has taken an industry with robust production back down to the crisis levels of the late ’80s with no one but itself to blame. Along the way, a stupendous US$110M has been invested in the new Chinese-built Skeldon factory. The factory is performing nowhere near capacity and additional amounts now have to be spent by a South African company to rectify the problem. The losses due to the below-capacity output for all the years it has been in service would be staggering. When faced with questions on Friday about an industry whose board he sat on from 1992 up to the point of his election, President Ramotar could only say, “A large part of the problem with sugar has to do with the reorganization that has to take place in the sugar industry. It is very, very clear that we have to reorganize sugar, we have to… depend much, much more on mechanization at this point in time and some of that has caused some disruption, which is worrying, about the level of production”. If reorganization is still being spoken of, it would be safe to say that many of the key decisions made over the last 20 years were wrong and the government has to be accountable for this. Subventions to GuySuCo under these circumstances could surely have come under scrutiny here.
Again, the sugar industry is another area ripe for examination by Parliament’s Economic Services Committee.
During the defence of the sports and arts fund which was eventually spared any chops, Culture Minister Dr Anthony was reported to have said that statements on Carifesta 2008 expenditure were with the Auditor General’s office. It has been nearly a five-year wait for this big ticket item to come under inspection. If the threat of cuts helped to bring about this development it is a positive sign. The public awaits word from the Auditor General’s office on this audit.
Whether this second year of budget cuts will mean a thing is left to be seen. All of last year’s cuts were restored and the areas that the opposition had intended to change grew even more deformed. At his press conference on Friday, President Ramotar vowed to do his utmost to have the cuts restored. One hopes that he has accepted that the only acceptable manner in which this can be done is to speak to the opposition within the framework of parliament and strike mature compromises.
