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[DRAFT]

The Grande Charade _____________

Address by Brigadier David Granger, MP, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly on Tuesday 8th April 2014, on the Motion by Dr. Ashni

Kumar Singh, MP, Minister of Finance on 24th March 2014, for the Approval of the Estimates of the Public Sector and the Budget for the Financial Year 2014.

[DRAFT]

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I stood here on Tuesday 17th April 2012 to participate in the debate on the first Budget debate of the 10th Parliament. I stood here again on Tuesday 9th April 2013 to participate in the debate on that year’s Budget. I stand here today on Tuesday 8th April 2014 to participate in a debate on another Budget. This year, as before, the Budget was planned, prepared, presented by the People’s Progressive Party Civic administration without meaningful consultation and collaboration with the majority in this Assembly. What do we have today? Same old PPP, same old evasions The National Assembly meets today to deliberate upon a budget that avoids even one mention the word ‘poverty.’ It does not mention the word ‘unemployment’ once. It does not mention the word ‘emigration’ once. For which country has this budget been written? Whose Budget is this? Budget 2014 is not a budget for the poor. It is not for workers. It is not for the young. It is not for the aged. It is anti-poor, anti-people and anti-progress. It is driven by politics, not economics. Budget 2014 re-emphasises the need to establish, as early as possible, a parliamentary ‘Office of the Budget.’ We need to build a permanent institution. We need to ensure that all sides of this National Assembly could comprehensively propose national measures needed for national development. It is clear that the Minister of Finance must be given the information and insights that are so desperately deficient in Main Street. No single person or party knows everything. A Partnership for National Unity is on the road, in the villages and among the people every week. We cover the collapsing waterfront at Kumaka, the sunken road at Barabina, the broken bridge at Moruca. We visit the

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flood victims at Friendship and Hackney in the Pomeroon and the Anna Regina Market. We inspect the rotten stellings at Parika and Vreed-en-Hoop. We meet the frequently robbed residents of La Parfaite Harmonie. We walk the ground in Albouystown and Sophia and listen to the woes of vendors in the Lusignan and the Mon Repos markets. We are in Perth, Brothers, Sisters, Rose Hall and Port Mourant. We are in Bartica, Waramadong, Paramakatoi, Bamboo Creek, Annai, Aranaputa, Surama, Sawariwau, Ituni and Kwakwani. APNU is on the road. We explore the huge country beyond Main Street. That is why we have been the ones to call, over the past 12 months, for:

- National Flood Control Plan to stop the annual cycle of flooding;

- National Infrastructure Plan to design a reliable countrywide network of aerodromes, bridges, highways and stellings;

- National Plan of Action for Hinterland Development to integrate our country more completely;

- National Youth Policy to allow the young to participate more fully in the management of their schools and communities;

- National Drug Strategy Master Plan to save our communities from the scourge of drug abuse.

APNU is on the road. We don’t know everything but we know that there are problems. That is why we have been the ones to call for commissions of inquiry into:

- Primary school system; - Primary health care system; - Criminal violence; - Trafficking in Persons; - The Sugar Industry - The National Insurance Scheme; - Deaths from gastro-enteritis;

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- Deaths from maritime accidents. These are the micro-economic fundamentals by which people live every day – having to stare at our schools, hospitals, police stations, the NIS and unfriendly face of an uncaring state. The people want a budget that goes to the heart of the everyday issues that confront them – one that does the greatest good for the greatest number. The people are struggling to survive with:

- Stagnant wages; - Rampant cost-of-living increases; - Rising child-care costs.

This budget must be the means to stimulate, not frustrate growth. The Budget before this Assembly however, has evinced no inspiration, no imagination and no innovation. What is it? Same old PPP, same old platitudes The Minister of Finance lays on the platitudes with a trowel. They are thick and heavy in the Budget’s so-called ‘medium-term’ outlook (4.1). No one will challenge the vision of a Guyana which “makes the leap from being a country of promise and potential” to one in which “that promise is fulfilled and that potential is realized.” No one can deny that we all want a country, as the Budget Speech states, in which:

- the unique advantages of our geographic location and our historical and bilateral relationships, the vastness of our natural resources and the richness of our human resources are all harnessed in service to the national good;

- we are better connected infrastructurally with our neighbours to realize more fully the benefits of integration;

- we are better connected across land, air and river to make our markets more efficient and to improve the ease with which our people can travel domestically;

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- the domestic digital divide is eliminated and where access to the vast advantages of information and communications technology is universally enjoyed;

- our domestic energy requirements are met entirely by renewable sources and where we become an exporter of clean energy;

- is one that is abundant in food supply far exceeding our domestic requirements and making a tangible contribution to regional and global food security;

- we all have access to social services of a suitably high quality and where our national health and education attainment indicators meet international standards.

This Budget, alas, is not the road to get us there; it is not the way ahead. This budget does not provide the resources to transform rhetoric into reality. What provisions and resources are there in Budget, for example, to:

- to build real highways from Linden to Lethem; from ituni to Kwakwani; from Bartica to Mahdia; from Annai to Aishalton and to develop a comprehensive national infrastructure network?

- to give our youth access to high quality education at the University of Guyana?

- to provide every young person with the opportunity to find rewarding productive employment?

- to stop the exodus of qualified citizens; - to allow every elderly person can retire in comfort? - to bring an end to the cronyism that is undermining the

transparent award of contracts to bona fide businessmen; - to make our hinterland safe from daily banditry and safe

enough from piracy to attract investors who want to bring their business here?

- to stop the contraband trade which distorts our economy and which nearly obliterated Port Kaituma last week when an illegal fuel boat exploded.

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The Cabinet commissioned an inquiry in 2003 to investigate the same fuel smuggling. The then President announced that the state was losing $6.0 billion a year in unpaid duties alone. Yet, eleven years later, we still have an explosive fuel-smuggling situation. Same old PPP, same old indifference to contraband smuggling. The public security crisis will not correct itself. Narco-trafficking is the engine of growth that is driving this country’s high rates of money-laundering, gun-running, execution-murders and armed robberies. Violent crime is scaring foreign investors, driving away the educated élite, undermining economic growth and impeding social development. The lucrative narco-trade has spawned armed gangs which use their wealth to purchase political influence and suborn the security forces in order to protect their interests. Money-launderers associated with narcotics-traffickers also distort the domestic economy by pricing their goods and services below market rates which undermine legitimate businesses. Revelations in the international media of a Guyana-Italy cocaine conspiracy are ominous. Evidence that Guyanese narco-traffickers are working hand-in-hand with Italian Mafiosi linked to the Gambino and Bonanno crime families and the Italian crime syndicate known as Ndrangheta confirms fears that Guyana is sleepwalking, step by step, into narco-statehood. Some people diligently keep newspaper clippings of twenty years ago but cannot remember what happened two months ago. “Jackass ears long,’ old people say, “but ‘e nah hear ‘e own story.” Hinterland Guyana west of Fort Island on the Essequibo River could be a very lawless and dangerous place. Banditry is rampant; contraband smuggling is commonplace; disease is prevalent;

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poverty is pervasive and educational standards are lower than the rest of the country. The hinterland comprises over three-quarters of this country’s territory. Long unwatched land borders with Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname; vast unpatrolled open spaces; unmonitored airstrips and numberless rivers have become corridors for illegal narcotics and firearms to be carried to commit crimes on the coastland.

The truth is that the nation wakes up every morning to the dreary reality of shoddy road repairs, broken schools, an underfunded university, shaky institutions and a brigade of jobless dropouts. The problem, of course, is that this Budget simply does not furnish the funds to confront the most serious challenges facing families. These are:

- the unavailability of jobs for young school-leavers everywhere;

- the quality of education at the primary and secondary levels along the coastland and in the hinterland and at the University of Guyana;

- the daily threats to human safety while there are 3 armed robberies every day, two murders every week and 12 fatal accidents every month and,

- the threats of disease – dengue, gastro-enteritis, malaria - to public health.

Same old PPP, same old prejudices This minority administration must not presume that it can ignore the public will. It cannot exclude the majority side from contributing to the preparation of such an important measure as the Budget. It has only been through the contribution of the majority side that the Executive can be made aware of the real situation on the ground affecting all of the people.

The view from Main Street is limited. It is difficult to comprehend fully the complexity of the demographic, economic, social and

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political changes taking place throughout this country. All politics is local. We are on the ground living among the people, listening to the ordinary people and learning from the people. When we speak, we speak with the voice of the people; that is why we must be heard!

The Budget, despite its promise – A better Guyana for all Guyanese – is more likely to degenerate into “a bitter Guyana for most Guyanese.” This Budget is dangerously dividing Guyana into two nations. It is creating an East-West divide that separates everything west of the Essequibo River from what lies to the east.

- Average per caput income; - Allocation of finance for roads and bridges; - Largest concentration of poor people.

Examine, for example, the section entitled “Physical Infrastructure for Transformation (pp. 32-33).” The roads to be repaired are mainly in the East Bank, West Coast, East Coast not in the rich gold and diamond mining areas. This Budget perpetuates the divergences, disparities and divisions which have hindered development in our country. Is this deliberate or is it an acute case of Main Street myopia? The hinterland underdevelopment crisis – so ably articulated by MPs Sydney Allicock, Dawn Hastings, Valerie Lowe, Eula Marcello, George Norton and Renitta Williams – will not correct itself. The Potaro-Siparuni Region, the Barima-Waini and Cuyuni-Mazaruni Regions to the north and the Rupununi Region to the South – might be most picturesque parts of the country but they are the poorest. Hinterland communities do not need baubles, beads, toys and trinkets. Handouts smother human initiative and extinguish enterprise. The hinterland, like everywhere else, needs reliable services – such as community-based solar and wind water and electricity-generation.

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Some mined-out parts have degenerated into a mosquito-infested wasteland. Its evergreen forests and pristine waterways are under threat. Its people are poor. Exploiting the economic resources, sustaining the livelihood of the residents and protecting the environment demand a new approach to hinterland administration. The national budget must provide for regional administrative centres – Bartica, Mahdia, Mabaruma and Lethem – to be quickly upgraded to township status with their own mayors and town councils. We must stop treating the hinterland as ‘bush.’ The hinterland’s mining, logging and tourism resources have been exploited for over a century and continue to enrich the national treasury, but their physical infrastructure is inadequate for such vast territory. Its small, scattered population is vulnerable to criminal violence, human trafficking and environmental hazard. Guyana’s economic development has been impeded. Its international competitiveness has been impaired all because of the lack of major investment in public infrastructure. Collapsing stellings; an aging fleet of ferries; deteriorating hinterland airstrips; broken bridges; impassable roadways and weakened kokers and sea defences, have all become major obstacles to everyday commuting, communication and commerce. Same old PPP, same old presumptiousness!

Budget 2014 did nothing to inspire hope. A bold budget was needed to move the country forward at a faster pace but such a budget is yet to be seen. Every Budget is a plan – an economic plan, a financial plan. It must be forward- not backward-looking if it is to be of any value. It must have a clear vision – a projection of what needs to be done tomorrow to solve today’s problems and the resources to achieve those objectives. It is not a recapitulation of previous administrations.

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The Budget is meant to point the economy in the direction of transformation, to marshal the people’s efforts and to draw on their entrepreneurial energy to overcome those challenges together. The Budget did throw a few crumbs to schoolchildren and pensioners that might please some of the people some of the time. But it could have done more to address other constituencies, especially the youth and students. Our Partnership deliberately designated 2014 as ‘The Year for Workers.’ The underlying hope was that the authors of the national budget should take reasonable and realistic measures to encourage job creation for our potential workforce. This Budget continues the neglect of youth education, employment and enterprise. The PPP spends like a drunken sailor on a lot of little projects – like the President’s Youth Choice Initiative and the President’s Youth Award Republic of Guyana, Youth Enterprise and Apprenticeship Programme; National Training Programme for Youth Empowerment - but it does not measure the impact of these schemes on careers and jobs for young graduates. These schemes are good at sharing out lots of red polo shirts but, in fact, they are just versions of PPP pet projects. What young people want are permanent institutions not ad hoc programmes. They want:

- Regional technical and agricultural institutes in every region, not just the coastland;

- Regional agricultural development banks; - Regional athletics, swimming and sports centres;

The Budget must include real measures that provide work for more young people. The basic fact that all parties acknowledge about Budget 2014 is that there is little that it will, or can, change, for the mass of the young people. The fact is that jobs are scarce. Young school leavers simply do not have the skills to equip many of

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them for the world of work. The economy simply is not providing employment opportunities for them. The story of the NIS is one of a dream turning into dread. It began operations in September 1969 under the People’s National Congress administration. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham had a clear vision of a welfare state which stood on three pillars – free education from the nursery to the university, affordable housing and social protection through the creation of a national insurance scheme which would afford coverage “from the cradle to the grave.” Same old PPP, same old dissimulation The Government of Guyana needs to introduce a serious security strategy to protect our citizens from criminal violence. APNU accuses the PPPC of failing to implement ‘root-and-branch’ reforms to strengthen border and hinterland security. APNU accuses the administration in this Budget debate of deliberately avoiding references to the high rate of armed robberies, contraband-smuggling, gun-running, money-laundering, narcotics-trafficking, people-trafficking, piracy and banditry plaguing the country. These crimes are sucking the oxygen out of the economy, stifling the manufacturing sector and strangling local enterprise. The PPP’s infatuation with citizens’ security, community policing and neighbourhood policing programmes is misplaced. We still experience the shockwaves of criminal violence which plagued the first decade of this millennium. This period will be remembered in this country’s history for its extraordinary number of drug-driven murders, massacres and executions. Guyana is bleeding. The administration has failed to enforce laws

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which protect life or even to ensure that the killings are investigated. Budget 2014 has failed to promise new measures which could strengthen the Police Force to prevent recurrences of these atrocities. The Budget must show us how the provision of financial resources will make the country safe by curbing the cocaine trade and gun-running which are pumping violence into the country. Same old PPP, same old parsimoniousness This country, arguably, has never been wealthy. The appearance of hordes of extremely poor, destitute, homeless persons and street children over the PPPC’s two decades is a man-made catastrophe. This is not a post-war situation. Poverty is not an act of God. Poverty can be reduced and, perhaps, eventually eradicated, with good governance and sensible public policies. Too many very young and very old persons are still classified as ‘extremely poor’ with an expenditure level that is below what is required to purchase a minimum low-cost diet. APNU iterates its call, even at this late stage, for the PPPC administration to:

- Reduce the value added tax; - Reduce income tax; - Generate jobs for school leavers;

The Budget does not mention Guyana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper even as a footnote. The PRSP was meant to be a mechanism through which Guyana could have crafted its own plan for poverty reduction and could provide a guideline for the World Bank to render assistance. The Budget seems to have abandoned the poor.

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The PPPC’s Budget 2014 will be measured by its public impact. APNU reserves its right to disagree with provisions which are not in the national interest. There is no way the country can move forward with such a budget that continues to disregard the needs of the most important factor in national development – the people! The National Assembly has an obligation to provide the leadership provide a better budget. It has a duty to design plans and strategies to overcome the economic, political and social challenges. It must forestall any folly that might prolong the nightmare of poverty that can lead us down the path of deeper destitution. Same old PPP, time is up The PPPC’s Budget 2014 will be measured by its public impact. It must be amended if the people are to enjoy a good life. A Partnership for National Unity signals that it disagrees with certain measures which have been proposed. When the questions are put, we shall exercise our constitutional right to express and agreement or disagreement. We might have the same old PPP in government but, we now have a new dispensation in which the APNU and AFC can combine to save this Budget. We must now work towards giving our people a good life.