Dear Editor,
The PPP’s mentality that sees people as mostly devourers of national revenues – or as Bharrat Jagdeo often snidely puts it “they just eat out the budget” — is the single starkest difference between how the PPP sees development and how APNU sees it.
Put aside for now the fact that APNU believes that a government has a binding moral obligation to ensure the welfare of its citizens, but the PPP does not. Put aside for now also that APNU regards as sacred the human rights of citizens to a high quality of life, but the PPP does not. Furthermore, put aside the fact that these considerations, singly or jointly, are enough to compel a government to spend on people-centred measures, such as paying a living wage and providing free or affordable high-quality social services. What also fundamentally separates the two parties is that APNU accepts, but the PPP rejects, the pure technical argument that investment in people (from womb to tomb) is a pivotal driver of socio-economic growth and development.
As such, APNU believes that spending, for example, on early childcare and education programmes ensures that babies and toddlers can receive the right nurture and nutrition during the time when 95% of their brain develops. There is a deluge of research that proves that such early head-start programmes vastly increase the likelihood of these children becoming healthy and productive adults. When such programmes also include free or affordable day-care services, more women are able to join the labour force or to continue their studies and careers.
APNU believes also that spending on families through, for example, guaranteed livable income for households, rent and mortgage assistance, rent-to-own housing, nutrition programmes, and subsidies on utilities not only helps to lift households out of poverty and economic insecurity, but increases the likelihood of families becoming positive social forces—producing such societal benefits as less juvenile delinquency and higher school attendance.
In addition, APNU sees granting living wages to the working poor as spurring economic development. As Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton noted at a Press conference on 13th April this year “The more people who can contribute to the economy and fairly benefit from it, the more prosperous we all are.” He added: “The more people participate as workers, producers, consumers, investors, and citizens, the better are the chances of building a vibrant and prosperous society and economy for all.”
For the PPP and the brightest-man-in-its-room, direct spending on people is consumption (eating out the budget), not investment for the present or the future. As such, the PPP believes such spending should be minimal. In its vision, the people’s salvation lies in waiting for the trickle from crony capitalism and infrastructure outlays. When is that day of salvation, the PPP is always careful not to say.
A word on infrastructure, as the PPP’s self-claim to fame. Spending mostly on infrastructure maintenance, replacement and upgrades (as currently the case) goes only so far, but will not transform the economy and people’s living standards. What instead is mostly needed is infrastructure to expand productive capacity and to change the game. If one leaves out the Coalition-initiated projects such as the Gas-to Energy project and the paving of the Linden-Mabura road, most of the spending on infrastructure by the PPP is useful but will not lift Guyana and the lives of Guyanese to the next several levels. No wonder the PPP is silent on providing deadlines for ending poverty and lifting living standards.
Respectfully,
Sherwood Lowe
