Debunking Greenidge’s claim to glory

In light of the collective Opposition’s (including their supporting media houses and NGOs) attempts to restructure this nation’s history and whitewash the image of Carl Greenidge, this editorial features part of Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall’s 2012 Budget speech.Nandlall averred that the 2012 Budget is simply a page taken from the developmental agenda of the PPP/C administration; an agenda which commenced in 1993, whereby 2012 marked 19 years of development hence.
He said his perception is that there is an expectation that Budget 2012 should contain a solution to every single economic, social, political and every other problem extant in Guyana, and opined that no budget in the world can achieve that phenomenon.
Nandlall reiterated in that address that the 2012 Budget (as are recurrent/consecutive PPP/C budgets) is only one page of a programme that Government hopes will transform the economic, social and physical landscape of Guyana, which, he asserted, is intended to make transformational changes in the lives and livelihoods of the Guyanese people.
This, obviously, is the ultimate aim of the PPP/C’s developmental plan; work that Nandlall posited has been in progress over the then 19 years of PPP/C administration’s stewardship of the nation.
He claimed that the progress that the government has made has been monumental, and stressed that for there to be an appreciation of the magnitude of this progress, then it is necessary to revisit the state of the country when the PPP/C acceded to the highest administrative office in the land in October of 1992, which, he contended, normally evokes much adverse reaction from the Opposition collective – the APNU and AFC.
He, however, argued that “unless we examine from where we started twenty years ago, the immense progress and transformational changes that the PPP/C Government has wrought in this country cannot be fully appreciated.”
Drawing attention to three budget speeches delivered in the National Assembly by former Finance Minister in the PNC administration, Carl Greenidge, which apparently members of the current political Opposition, including Greenidge himself, had difficulty in accessing, the Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs came under harsh criticism from the opposition benches; but he pointed out that he had simply requested from the Clerk of the National Assembly copies of Greenidge’s Budget presentations, and was duly provided same.
The AG declared: “What I found when I read them (Greenidge’s Budget speeches), it was like a death announcement; one pronouncement after another. The death of economic growth; the death of so many industries. Every single sector declined in performance. At the end of it, the economy was bankrupt,” which, Nandlall contended, is a fact that no-one can dispute.

However, it was a vain hope on his part because Nandlall’s disclosures elicited an explosive outburst from the Opposition benches, as is normal when their past and abysmal performance in governance is exposed to the current generation of voters.
Nandlall, however, reiterated that Guyana’s economy was bankrupt when the PPP/C inherited it, with no foreign reserves. Continuing to refer to Greenidge’s Budget speeches, Nandlall declared: “We had several bouts of whopping devaluations: Ten to one; thirty-three to one; from thirty-three to one to one-hundred-and-one to one…”
Responding to his own query on the expanse of the devaluation, Nandlall enumerated a few, among which were constant decline of GDP; an unserviceable debt burden on the nation; serious balance-of-payment deficiencies, which he said Greendige could not explain, and frankly referred to as an “economic disequilibrium”.
The infrastructure, recalled Nandlall, was “in complete tatters;” whereupon there was another loud outburst from the Opposition benches, which constrained Nandlall to indicate the passages in Greenidge’s Budget speeches of 1990, 1991, and 1992 from where he was quoting.
Explaining that he had marked the relevant passages, Nandlall began to read directly from Greenidge’s Budget speeches: “The fiscal imbalance, which has been of major concern and the pre-occupation of an economic policy, has now been narrowed…,” but he was not allowed to continue, due to constant interruptions, and loud protests from the opposition benches.
Nandlall, however, maintained that “…these documents pronounced the economic death of Guyana,” emphasizing that the only things on the rise under PNC rule were inflation and the underground economy. And this was during the much-touted recovery under Hoyte’s leadership.
Conversely, he stressed that under the stewardship of the PPP/C administration, the economy has somersaulted to achieving a strong macro-economic infrastructure; the highest ever foreign reserves; a reduction of interest rate from 32.5% to 4.5%; economic growth that was in the negative prior to 1992 is now consistently at an average of 4.4%, with 5.4% growth recorded in 2011, which he noted had been achieved by Guyana in an adverse global and regional economic environment.
Nandlall continued to adumbrate the achievements of successive PPP/C administrations since 1992: “We have a strong balance-of-payment position, and our economy is at its strongest and largest ever; and, of course, I would not go into the Government’s plethora of social programmes which are benefitting the people countrywide…” because, as he pointed out, the sector ministers are quite capable of doing so.
He nevertheless noted that among other social programmes, all of them having great positive impacts on the lives of the Guyanese people, in excess of 100,000 persons have been housed through the government’s housing programme, with 6,500 more projected to similarly benefit in 2012, pointing out that the PNC did not have a housing policy, not even a housing ministry.
He highlighted the fact that although the lands had always been there, Guyanese people lived in much squalor under difficult circumstances until the PPP/C Government began transforming cow pastures, cane fields, rice fields and other abandoned areas into affordable housing schemes that enabled persons who never had a hope of owning their own homes to live under their own roofs, with all the implications of wealth generation and wealth creation possibilities.
Nandlall emphasised, “We had to build the land up; make roads; dig drains; install water…electricity, and then we allocated the land, ensuring that the people received their transports and titles.”
Continuing, he reminded the House: “…and then we went to the commercial banks and negotiated low-interest loan programmes; a complete loan package unparalleled in any other part of the world.”
The foregoing is a minute part of Nandlall’s 2012 Budget speech, in which he debunked all of Greenidge’s contentions, using that PNC former Finance Minister’s own words to portray the real historical facts, and not the figments of the Opposition cabal’s imagination that is continuously parlayed in the National Assembly and through misleading news reports.

 

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