APNU+AFC owe an apology to the Guyanese people, particularly to their supporters. They did nothing to develop this country between 2015 and 2020; they caused more than 37,000 people, including 7,000 sugar workers, to lose their jobs; the majority of the community recreational grounds were un-kept; the country’s financial resources were squandered; the housing, health and education sectors were neglected; and corruption abounded.
Now in Opposition, they continue to neglect their duties to the people of this country; the scrutiny of the national budget is a major responsibility of the Opposition. APNU+AFC failed in Government, now they are rapidly earning the title as the worst Opposition in Guyana’s history, and in Caricom. They must apologise to the Guyanese people, especially their supporters.
BUDGET 2021 debate is in full swing. Among the most remarkable moments during the first day was an APNU/AFC MP calling sugar workers “bloodsuckers”. The sugar workers are hard-working Guyanese workers. For many decades under the PNC, from the 1960s through to the 1990s, sugar workers kept the country from bankruptcy. Public servants and other employees in state corporations were able to receive wages and salaries in part from the sugar levy and the profits from sugar. In the 1980s alone, more than $100B in today’s money value was extracted from the sugar workers as loans – that were never paid back – to keep the country afloat.
In smaller ways, the rice farmers, through the rice levy, contributed. No doubt, sugar is having a difficult time right now; But, make no mistake, SUGAR is not having a handout from the present Government, nor did SUGAR receive a handout from APNU+AFC. The initial subsidies coming from Government after 2011 were from the monies Guyana earned from the EU as a result of the EU providing compensation after their arbitrary withdrawal from our SUGAR Agreement.
After 2015, not only was the subsidy partly from the EU money, it was also from a $30B loan APNU+AFC took in the name of those sugar workers, an amount of money that APNU+AFC still cannot account for. Without a doubt, sugar workers are not “bloodsuckers”, but the sugar workers can point their fingers in a specific direction to the real “bloodsuckers”. Can we guess in which direction those fingers are likely to point?
The sugar workers still want to know where the $30B went? APNU+AFC has a legal, moral and political responsibility and obligation to stand in Parliament and give an account. It is reckless to call the sugar workers “bloodsuckers” when it was your Government that closed four sugar estates, that froze the wages of sugar workers for five years, that took away jobs from 7,000 people.
It is sheer audacity and shamelessness that you would want to show up in a budget debate and the only thing you have to contribute is to say that sugar workers are “bloodsuckers”. Moses Nagamootoo is in hiding since August 2, 2020. He once deemed himself the “champion of sugar workers”. This is his opportunity to gain some redemption. Moses must come out from hiding and condemn his sisters and brothers in the PNC for their continued assault on sugar workers.
But his comrade Khemraj Ramjattan is in Parliament still. He, too, claimed before 2015 that he was a “champion for sugar workers”, but he, too, betrayed the sugar workers. Is he going to try gaining some redemption by standing up in Parliament and denouncing his fellow MPs for shamelessly denigrating sugar workers?
I cannot be in Parliament to speak on behalf of the heroes and heroines in the sugar industry, but I fully expect that the Minister of Agriculture would stand on the side of the sugar workers when he speaks during this debate.
The parliamentary Opposition had eleven days, since BUDGET 2021 was read by Minister Ashni Singh two Fridays ago, to prepare for the debate. In those eleven days, there was barely any official comment from the Leader of the PNC or APNU/AFC (David Granger seems to be hibernating somewhere), from the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, and from any senior member of the coalition.
On Facebook, a couple of persons among their ranks made some desperately puerile criticisms based on deliberate misrepresentation. Actually, it was not just misrepresentation, it was total fabrication and lies. The main criticism they had to offer was that BUDGET 2021 made no provision for salary increases for public servants. Winston Jordan, the former Minister of Finance, led that lie. The Leader of the Opposition could only say that BUDGET 2021 is like a jet that never took off. What that means is only left to our imagination.
But once the debate started on Monday, people, including their most ardent supporters, realised that the Opposition had no substance to debate BUDGET 2021. Their opening speaker was the worst-ever opening speaker on a BUDGET debate. The PPP never agreed on much with opening debate speakers like Winston Murray, Robert Corbin and Dunstan Barrow, but they respected them for their cogent presentations. BUDGET 2021 debate had an opening that now stands as the worst in the parliamentary history of Guyana. It never got better, as Opposition speakers, one after the other, outperformed their colleagues as being more and more belligerent, empty and shameless.
