APNU/AFC is not fit and proper to be Guyana’s Opposition party in Parliament

There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that APNU/AFC is a weak, non-effective opposition party. Without a shadow of doubt, they are not fit and proper to represent the Guyanese people as the opposition in Parliament. In fact, they are so inept they went through the totality of the Parliamentary debate without an Opposition Leader; they were rudderless, and it showed in their performance. Now that the committee meetings are underway to scrutinize the line-by-line budget for each sector, APNU/AFC continues their clueless performance, still without a Leader of the opposition. APNU/AFC could not even figure out that until it is able to decide on a new leader of the opposition, it should continue with Joe Harmon. Instead, Harmon sat in Parliament as a regular member, but spoke last in the regular line-up spot reserved for the leader of the opposition.
While Harmon resigned as the Leader of the Opposition, he was still the senior MP for APNU/AFC and the very least one would have expected him to do was to be present in Parliament for his budget speech. Instead, he spoke remotely by Zoom. But that was not the only insult to the Guyanese people, APNU/AFC MPs boycotted Harmon. If an MP cannot respect a senior MP from his or her own party, how can ordinary citizens expect respect from such an MP? It is disgusting to see that MPs who are paid for a few days of work each month, most of their workdays being during consideration of the budget, find so little time to be present in Parliament to listen to the debate. In every Parliament, MPs come and go during debates. However, there is a certain decorum that is expected of the people’s representatives. For one, MPs are expected to be present when certain senior members speak.
The APNU/AFC MPs also boycotted Khemraj Ramjattan. Not one MP from APNU/AFC was in his or her seat when Ramjattan spoke. Ramjattan sits in Parliament as the Leader of the AFC which represents the second largest party in the coalition. This is what happens when there is no leader. Joe Hamilton, the Minister of Labour, and a Government MP was correct that the opposition is like thirty-one “headless yard fowls, fluttering and flattering” about aimlessly. In David Granger’s infamous words, they are not “fit and proper”.
Obviously, the MPs from APNU/AFC had no theme in debating the budget. Prior to the debate the PNC’s General Secretary made the only pre-budget debate remarks on Budget 2022, stating the budget was not “fit for purpose”. I thought they would have shown up with this theme, that Budget 2022 was not “fit for purpose”. But absolutely nothing was presented in 31 speeches made by their MPs to show that Budget 2022 was not “fit for purpose”. The MPs attacked the budget on hearsays, made-up excuses and numbers, nothing in the way of logics.
In the opening salvo, Amanza Walton-Desir, their MP serving as the shadow foreign affairs minister said that “numbers matter”, but she did not critically review any number. The main argument in the “numbers matter” theme was that $218B allocated for infrastructure was too much for a country like Guyana to manage. For the first time in a budget debate, it is not whether Guyana has enough resources for infrastructure development, but that we have too much money for infrastructure development.
In fact, there were many nonsensical points raised by APNU/AFC MPs. One was made by the new Chairman of the PNC, MP Shurmayne Holder who loudly and slowly for effect regaled the Parliament and the nation with his own form of mathematics. So as to be politically correct, we cannot dub PNC mathematics “voodoo” mathematics anymore. These days, we simply denounce PNC mathematics as “surreal” or not “fit and proper”. MP Holder, declared that, with US$608M oil money Guyana already has accumulated, we can give every Guyanese, “every man, woman, child” US$5000 or Guyana $1M. That he was not even in the ballpark did not matter to him or his colleagues. In my days in Parliament, Bharrat Jagdeo would have called me to his office and gave me a good lecture for being so ridiculous.
In the meanwhile, the PNC forced MP Nicolette Henry to resign and make way for Aubrey Norton. This too they could not do right. So now Norton is not expected in Parliament until after April 1. The party that clumsily tried rigging an election in the full view of everybody is now in full view showing off its cluelessness.
President David Granger in 2018 rejected eighteen Guyanese professionals nominated by the Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo as not “fit and proper” to be GECOM’s head. Today, the same Granger is Head of a List that is essentially full of persons not “fit and proper” to represent the Guyanese people in Parliament. This is visible when one of the senior MPs screamed to the government “mash your brakes, you going forward too fast”. Guyanese want to move forward as rapidly as we can so that we are not just a high middle-income country on paper, but we look like, feel like, and live like we are in a high middle-income country. Our country is “fit and proper” for this to happen.