Dear Editor,
Clement Rohee, General Secretary of the PPP/C in one of his media briefings had said that when his party entered parliament for the budget debate their engagement would be unprecedented. This declaration created great expectations in the country, particularly among his party’s supporters who were made to expect, ‘fire and brimstone’ by the party as it engaged the APNU+AFC government in the budget debate.
We were also told by another leading PPP/C member, Gail Teixeira, that when the former President, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo addressed the National Assembly on economic matters, the government side would get diarrhoea.
Based on these public pronouncements it was not surprising that at the completion of the budget debate many PPP/C supporters were deeply disappointed by the inability of their party to deliver on its much vaunted promise to discredit and destroy the government’s budget.
The much anticipated PPPC “Big Bang” did not materialize; instead the nation was told very early in the PPP/C’s presentation that the budget contained many ideas of the last PPP/C regime, and the opposition party will support these measures. Ironically, it is this admission which was based on fact or fantasy, which militated against the opposition, thereby derailing the PPP/C‘s thunder in the process. It became an impossible task for the PPP/C to reconcile the claim that major parts of the budget were their ideas, and at the same time describe the budget as ineffective and lacking answers to address the pressing challenges facing the economy and country.
It was clear that the PPP/C during the debate was a victim of its own logic, and as a result, found itself caught in the dilemma of not being able (to quote a popular Guyanese saying) to have cake and bake at the same time. Once they had committed publicly to their stated position of claiming major parts of the budget as originating from them, they ultimately shot themselves in the foot and blunted the cutting edges of their attacks. The task of being both critical and praiseworthy proved too difficult a burden for them to bear, hence their wishy-washy performance during the debates.
Finally, I believe the performance of the Leader of the Opposition during the debate was at best, shambolic. The final nail in the coffin of his and the PPP/C’s miserable display in the budget debates occurred at the end of Mr Jagdeo’s presentation when he and his team walked out of the Assembly thereby giving the impression that he was willing to throw a few punches but then ran away from the fight. The big bad PPP/C leader’s performance in the parliament turned out to be a damp squib that burnt itself out rather than explode with the promised tremendous bang.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
