Passing…the (Budget) line items

If, Dear Readers, you – like most of those newbies in WIN! – thought they were done and finished with Budget 2026, you – and them – got another think comin’!! They had to meet yesterday at the Convention Center-cum National Assembly – to perform one of the most tedious tasks invented by man – making watching grass grow seem positively hair-raising! – scrutinising the $1.558 TRILLION Budget items contained in SIX VOLUMES – line by mind-numbing line!! Volume 1 alone has 757 pages!! Remember that line by Thomas Paine when the Yanks declared independence from Britain?? “These are the times that try men’s souls”!!
A lot of souls will be tested in this last part of the Budget Process!! As Paine warned, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman”!! Let’s see who’s gonna come out of this process separating the men and women from the boys and girls!! The entire contingent of 65 MPs will first be baptised by the Speaker and henceforth called “The Committee of Supply” – with him now becoming the Chairman!! They’ll scrutinise the Budget Estimates, Supplementary Estimates, and Statements of Excesses.
The Speaker-cum-Chairman will read out each line item of spending – say Region 1: Barima/Waini’s $2,457,912 for the Current Expenditure for this year. Above this line will be all the specifics such as Telephone & Internet Charges, Electricity Charges, Water Charges, Security Charges etc. The comparative charges for 2024 and 2025 will also be listed and the MPs can object, suggest reductions or increases, etc. Then finally, the Speaker-cum-Chairman will intone – “All those in favour of the stated line item say “AYE”. And the Government MPs will dutifully intone sonorously “Aye!!” The Speaker-cum-Chairman will then in a voice that will be now redolent of ennui “All those NOT in favour of the stated line item say “Nay”.
And he will not even lift up his eyes to watch, much less count the nays – since he knows by the very structure of the composition of the National Assembly, the Government MPs gonna always outnumber the Opposition’s!! And so he’ll automatically drone, “The Ayes have it”!! And then proceed to the ten thousand or so other lines!! The acid test in this segment not surprisingly will be how many heads will bang their desks as Hypnos, the Greek God of sleep, would’ve been invoked by all the droning!! And finally, they’ll then be done, right??
No Siree Bob!! There now gotta  be an Appropriations Bill introduced – to approve the amended line items!! And the dazed surviving lot stumbles home!!

…the Coastlands
From the boom in construction in houses, factories, hotels – in addition to increasing lands for farming, we gotta be fast running out of coastlands!! So, we better come up with a plan to satisfy the new demands arising out of the trillions and trillions in the Government’s developmental plans!! Well, to your Eyewitness, the solution’s pretty simple: just as the US invented the slogan “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN!!” when their East Coast started getting crowded, we can encourage everyone needing land to “GO SOUTH, YOUNG MEN ANS WOMEN!!”
Now your Eyewitness is aware that our eco-friendly policies warn against cutting down our interior forests – which we’re committed to preserving. But hey!! Down south ain’t all forests, is it?!! There’s the sand and clay belt where Silica City’s being constructed; then the vast intermediate savannahs where we’re planting soya and corn. Not to mention the Rupununi Savannahs that can swallow Jamaica without even burping.
After the Linden-Lethem highway’s finished, we just gotta build more roads and railways to those areas!!

…the Gringos
The Super Bowl’s the biggest thing on the American social calendar. For their half-time entertainment, they invited the Puerto Rican, Spanish rapper Bad Bunny.
In calling out the “United States”, he enumerated all the countries in South and Central America!!