Dear Editor,
I scan some positions on the 2023 budget and discern that Guyanese have made choices, backed themselves into dark corners, may even like where they are, and how they make effigies of themselves. Partisan is not the word. Lingering truths have vanished with a rabid replacement fanaticism now prevalent and saturating everything. A record budget today that leaves those at the margins and lower levels uninspired, not really touched.
Budget pluses have been noted and recognized by me here. I am pleased to say that the PPP Government plans this in education, that in healthcare, and so on. The record is there. Where I detected shortcomings, those were pinpointed. It is not perfect, but principled. In the biggest oil boomtown anywhere, Guyanese stragglers and struggling must hear the echoes, and actually taste the inspiration of oil’s refreshing, difference-making nectars. They are not; not to the degree that they should right now. It troubles.
What is wrong with pointing to, and standing for that caring? Who in the ranks of PPP loyal public presences would shrink from saying a word about such? Yet, they have, and in some sophisticated ways that still left the man and woman without wondering if they know that they exist. The visible provisions – roads, schools, facilities – all have their benefits; and the invisibles – light and water bills, fuel subsidy and more – mean that without them, the pocket would have been pinched and strained to intolerable states. I kneel before all of those.
But to justify $5,000 for pensioners ($4.38B), while $136.1B (31 times more) is thought of for roads and bridges conveys a gross imbalance, a conspicuous tilt, that somebody had to be honest and self-respecting enough to say that pensioners needed a bigger bump, and overall infrastructure, a few billions less. When $208.9 billion from the Oil Fund is to be withdrawn for budget purposes, I think that a mere 10% of that had to be frozen for coping by the left behind. Even when consideration is given to the $5B for “cost-of-living measures” the direct infusions to help those in need, and gasping for breath, the budget does not reflect 10% in direct aid and timely helping hand for those who have to do without. Emphasis on direct aid to pocket: more tax relief, more provisions that are palpable in that they are felt.
I am all for infrastructure and readying for the next century, but not when our brothers and sisters are compelled to line up naked and sickly and weepy, with a calabash in their hand, hoping that rushing passersby will spare a dime. As I think of this, I put this before PPP partisans and PNC partisans, and all Guyana. Guyana is like a man with a MD, JD, and PhD that can’t stand on his own two feet because he is anaemic. What good are all those glittering academics (stats) to him? Or, Guyana is like a stunningly beautiful female from which the world can’t avert its eyes, but one whose dependent children don’t know the last time she was around. In both illustrations, somebody is on their own. Somebody has to say something, stand for something. I do my little, appreciating that it is not even a ripple.
When there is a budget of $781.9B, and we can’t even isolate 10% (not 15% or 20%) of that amount to extend a powerful comforting hand to our wounded and weak, whether recognized by the World Bank or FAO or ECLAC, then I think that a piercing travesty, a terrible calumny, and an incomparable injustice was just done and experienced. I regret that I am not conditioned to rationalize the irrational, defend the indefensible, or justify the unjustifiable. Others can.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
