Dear Editor,
As a member of the Alliance For Change’s National Executive Committee, I found your editorial of Sunday, August 11, 2013 difficult to read without being affected by its scathing indictment of the party. For the sake of our party supporters who are as concerned as you are over the AFC’s recent actions in the National Assembly, I wish to make some comments.
I believe it is important to note that at no time was anything ever put before the National Assembly seeking its approval for the Amaila Falls Hydro Project in its entirety and therefore no such approval could have been given at that level.
Earlier in the year the AFC took the position that it would await the completion of the various IDB reports before deciding whether or not to approve this project. This position was taken with respect to budgetary support for the project contained in the 2013 estimates. The AFC therefore voted not to approve the sums requested for government equity in the project.
This position never implied that in the interim we would block any supporting measures required to allow further developments to take place. Nor did it imply that we would be throwing our weight behind any of these measures.
As it turned out there were only two such measures put before the National Assembly and the AFC’s positions on both seem perfectly reasonable to me. However, I believe that the events in the National Assembly on July 18 may have led to some confusion as to where the party stood on each of these, since our MPs ended up rejecting both. I will not go into the details of why this occurred but I’m sure most will agree that this was a messy day in parliament that no one can be proud of.
The fact of the matter is that the AFC had taken an earlier decision to support the amendments to the Hydro-Electric Power Act, since it was made clear to us by representatives of the IDB that they could not make final presentations to their Board of Directors unless certain environmental safeguards were incorporated into the licensing act. The vote to support this on August 7 did not therefore constitute a shift in position, but a return to an original position that had been compromised by the July 18 fiasco in the National Assembly.
On the motion to raise the limit on government’s guarantee of loans to public corporations to $150B, the AFC’s position was to not support this since it had not been made sufficiently clear why it was necessary.
This position was later revised based on considerations that included government’s support for Local Government Bills (albeit amended). The AFC also proposed amendments to safeguard against what you refer to as giving the government a “blank cheque.” The final resolution makes this guarantee specific to GPL’s obligations in respect of the project, and is reviewable within three months. It also guarantees a significantly lower amount than was previously sought by government, an amount which according to Anand Goolsarran in his August 5 column in this newspaper represents a “more realistic figure.” The AFC’s vote by no means gives the government a “blank cheque,” nor does it constitute a “complete volte face” on the position to await IDB due diligence.
I would add also that what was achieved was the passage of local government legislation which the government has successfully managed to stall for over a decade, to the detriment of the people of this country. This would not have occurred had the AFC not revised its position on the loan guarantee motion.
Finally, I must acknowledge that timing is everything, and what is described above is now further complicated by the recent disclosures in the media of the professional relationship between our party’s Chairman and the company developing the project. This cannot be swept under the rug. The question posed in the final sentence of your editorial is poignant and cannot be ignored.
Yours faithfully,
Dominic Gaskin
