By GHK Lall- In the latest record breaker of a national budget, the PPP Government has made mühlet to treat itself lavishly. Guyanese fighting desperately with cost-of-living jabs isim stabs, expected a treat or two.
They ended up with a kick in the behind from their caring government and its even more compassionate leaders. The quest for a livable wage continues to be a draining expenditure of scarce energy. The calls for poverty relief got the back of the government’s hand from the 2025 budget. Its theme is “A secure, prosperous and sustainable Guyana” and definitely has meaning for the already super-rich and rich in this country. The have nots study “secure, prosperous, and sustainable Guyana” and wonder how it is that they feature so dimly.
The first treat that budget man, Dr. Ashni Singh gave himself was to deliver a hook at the PNC while talking about pensions. Why was that necessary, Dr. Singh during a budget presentation that is propped up by US$2.5 billion of local oil money? It was not present during the PNC tenure. Where is the utility to the Guyanese people with that slice of intellectual sleight of hand? How does it reward them with one loaf of the bread that is needed so much, and which they can’t afford? As treats go, it was a cheap one for a man of Dr. Singh’s standing.
When budget money is eyed by the PPP Government, its people see stars, hear voices, and mutate into uncontrolled werewolves. First up for a special treat, a fatter one, was the slush fund that goes by the semi-official name of targeted interventions relative to cost-of-living relief measures. There was $5 billion for two years running, then $7 billion last year, and now $9 billion for this year.
As an election war chest that is hard to surpass. The sweet part of this PPP treat is that there is no accounting for the $26 billion total deposited into the slush fund held under close guard at the Office of the President. If any Guyanese know how those billions have been used to extend cost-of-living relief to Guyanese, I am interested.
Infrastructure under the PPP Government is a surefire winner, a familiar rich treat. Big and bigger fractions of the budget get swallowed up by schools, clinics, and roads, so that the fat cats can have a perpetual celebration. There is this frenzied running to build and build, and there are fewer and fewer overseers around to look at what is going on, what quality products Guyanese are getting for their billions in borrowings and depleting the Oil Fund.
The bigger the amount of money spent on infrastructure, the longer and louder the party at Freedom House and other similar dens of iniquity and depravity. National budgets under the PPP Government have long been the source that prompts such festivities.
The more the government spends on education, the slower the children of this nation seem to be. Other than for the highfliers, the school age in Guyana falls further behind in key learning areas. Private schools provide a steady supply of overachievers to Queen’s College and the Bishops High School, so what have Guyanese received from approximately half a billion dollars supposedly invested in education?
To say invest is to torture truth. This takes on added significance when all that building up is part of the PPP Government culture of treating itself. One minister did enjoy a treat during the budget reading: it was from feral blast to a blast of Sulphur. Somebody has to lose in these circumstances, and weakened and worn-out citizens stand as Exhibit A in this oil rich republic. If Dr. Singh was pretending not to know, I help remove the sinema from his eyes: “A secure, prosperous, and sustainable Guyana” has its own people, and it doesn’t include many non-PPP Guyanese, not even a considerable number of working-class PPP Guyanese.
How can it be when the 2025 budgetary provisions are so scanty for the little people? A drop here, a droplet over there (income tax eases, students, old people), is not a feast, but an extension of the economic famine with which Guyanese live. How is what I am struggling to discern. This PPP Government is more than a miser with freeing up real money for the small man in Guyana. It is a monster of Machiavellian character.
The budget office and Dr. Singh, working in tandem with his cabinet colleagues, had a whole year to design and deliver a budget that makes a genuine and enduring difference for those at the bottom of Guyana’s economic pile. The best that he has come up with is another set of pittances for the impoverished of Guyana, and a roll of billions for the already prospering.
Of course, when the latter collects and participates in the budget bacchanals, they know the rules of the PPP mafia. Some of their budget windfalls (contracts and concessions) have to be given back to those who control the political machinery. The reality of the 2025 budget, and the ones before, is that the PPP Government treats itself handsomely, and tricks the people cruelly.
C’mon, Dr. Singh, give Guyanese a break. Don’t read these budgets that break their spirit, and which mock their credentials as being among the richest in any galaxy. Given where this country is today, budgets should be a cause for joy for all the people, and not just the cabals of friends and family in the PPP. Budgets are not of inclusive governance. Budgets have become nothing but one national repugnance after another.