It is good that this year the Minister of Finance has decided to give the opposition relatively good notice of the tripartite budget consultations. Of course, as Mr. Carl Greenidge, the opposition spokesperson on finance, suggests, the process of those consultations (by which I include the liberal sharing of information) is as important as the discussions themselves and needs to be properly worked out and agreed upon beforehand. Mr. Greenidge also suggested something that I believe to be far more important than the procedures and the discussion themselves, namely that the attitude of the parties involved in the discussions needs to be more accommodative.
Modern governments seek to be inclusive and take on board those policies and suggestions coming from the opposition that coincide with their vision of the future.
Of course, in the political process, those in office must make political judgments as to when to surreptitiously co-opt opposition policies and when to give them credit for
