Budget debate
Fundamental changes required to save Guyana - Holder
Stabroek News
April 8, 2003
GAP/WPA Member of Parliament, Sheila Holder, says an end to the political crisis in Guyana can only be achieved if there is a subordination of what individuals desire in favour of peace, harmony and happiness for all Guyanese.
Calling for a paradigm shift in the government's thinking as she opened the debate yesterday on the 2003 national budget, Holder said if the government really cared about the physical and psychological damage that last year's traumatic events inflicted on Guyanese, it must muster the courage to bring an end to the sapping of people's energies, the eroding of the quality of life and the perennial divisive political and parliamentary system handed down to Guyanese.
"Recognising that the perennial political instability robs us of social and economic advancement is but one step; changing the system is the next," Holder said.
She further noted that the political dilemma Guyana faced needed to be corrected through the introduction of appropriate democratic measures in the electoral and parliamentary systems since the correlation between economic growth, development and more democracy was now recognised internationally. She questioned the difficulty of making such a paradigm shift.
"The impression we are getting is that the government sees itself as being part of the solution but not part of the problem. The days when you could have gotten away with that argument are gone. You are as much a part of the problem as you must be the solution," Holder argued. She said as the occupants of the seat of government, the government had a greater responsibility to broker a solution to the debilitating political problems, which had left Guyana traumatised and fractured for four decades.
"The situation clearly calls for an end to political posturing, the defending of partisan interests and focusing instead on the people's welfare," she said, warning the government that history would treat it unkindly should it fail to rise to the occasion.
She noted that while the Minister of Finance acknowledged political stability was a prerequisite for economic development, job creation and attracting foreign direct investment, he stopped short of indicating whether the government was prepared to make a positive paradigm shift from its "nebulous political inclusivity" proposal given its inability to implement the constitutional reform measures of several years to move the country out of the current political morass.
Treating with the budget measures itself, Holder said the rise in the income tax threshold provided no real benefit to cash-strapped Guyanese and low income tax payers stood to lose disposable income in light of the new telephone tax. She also noted that the "unjust" burden of electricity and water rates translated into an unofficial tax on heavily burdened consumers as blackouts turned their lives upside down.
She questioned how the Minister of Finance could not have mentioned the rate of unemployment in Guyana when this had reached national disaster levels.
She also chided the government for dubbing the budget "Staying on Course" arguing that this would mean pretending that the government did not beg for debt relief as it systematically increased the debt burden to unmanageable proportions; that the balance of payment deficits had not increased drastically from US$8.4M in 2001 to US$25.1M last year; that the trade imbalance did not stand at US$68.2M; that the withholding tax rate at 20% would not discourage the use of the banking system; that it would not mean turning a blind eye to the administration undermining the public service via inordinate influence over public officials; and it would mean allowing oneself to be hoodwinked by the ministers' deliberate use of ambiguous and confusing figures in relation to Go-Invest and the quantum of investment attracted last year.
She argued that the government has failed to manage competently and efficiently the current social, economic and political problems facing Guyana and the reality was fostering a growing hopelessness among young people; a growing level of intolerance, lawlessness and banditry.
She pointed to the youths brandishing weapons and having no regard for life and urged the government to move with speed to hack at the root of such evil.
Holder noted that the problems local and foreign investors faced were the discretionary and discriminatory nature of fiscal incentives while corruption continued to be treated as an aberration and the tendering system was yet to be modernised.
Prime Minister Sam Hinds, who spoke after Holder, called for a paradigm shift in thinking to build Guyana.
He described the budget as a family budget, noting that the same way everyone tried to make ends meet, the government did too, and had to seek 25% of its budgetary spending from foreign sources.
He said the government wanted to be on the road to rapid growth and development but this would require sustained growth levels in the order of five to ten per cent per annum. He said growth was 1.1% last year and was projected at 1.2% this year. However, he said that workers should be challenged to increase productivity and realise a higher growth rate for Guyana. He challenged Holder's position that the government was living in an unreal world.
He said the government was pressing on, as it had to continue to be the government of all of Guyana. He said the government had tried its best to spread the little it had in all the places for all the people.
Touching on what he described as nebulous calls for shared governance, Hinds asked if this would mean sharing the cabinet and wondered what would have happened then given that in parliament, members could not come together.
He said that the way forward was to remain whole and to retain the parliamentary system where a majority assumed power upon winning an election and faced the electorate after a period to either be returned in or out of office. He said nothing was greater than having regular free and fair elections.
Whilst he regretted that the economy had stalled in the last five years, he said lessons were learnt and the country could make up for the setbacks.
He dubbed the budget very simple with its focus on maintaining macroeconomic stability, modernising the traditional sectors, focusing on new growth areas, improving the regulatory framework, rehabilitating and expanding the social infrastructure, creating sustainable employment and fostering accountability and transparency in the governance.
