– Carried identical arguments
Delivering the address that kicked off the 2010 Budget Debates, opposition party representative, Winston Murray, placed heavy emphasis on Ram and McRae’s ‘Focus on Guyana’s National Budget 2010’, which was published on Thursday, February 11, 2010.
Much of Murray’s arguments were a direct lift from the analysis.
Beginning his address Murray started on the same note that the Chartered Accounting firm did, the violation on Article 13 of  the Constitution that requires citizens and their organisations to be provided with the opportunity to participate in the management and decision-making process of the State via consultations in the budgetary process.
The opposition member said that the external debt stands at $US933 million and that, taken together in 2010, domestic and foreign debt will be US$1.3B.
These were the same projections made by Ram and McRae, who said that the debt was almost entirely incurred by the Jagdeo Administration. Murray said the same.
Another similarity was the mention of the monies to be received from the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), as well as the context in which the arguments were placed.
The Consolidated Fund and the placement of monies elsewhere rather in the said Fund was a point Murray elaborated on.
The Ram and McRae report said “The National Budget is becoming increasingly unreliable as monies required to be put in the Consolidated Fund are placed elsewhere.”
Murray lambasted the Government on the same issue, commenting also on what they both consider the unreliability of the budget.
The dependence placed on Ram and McRae’s report was glaringly visible when Murray said that the budget has not been casted in a framework that defines or describes an overarching strategy.
Ram and McRae’s report said, “There is nothing in the budget that defines or describes an overarching vision for the country and the economy.”
PPP General-Secretary, Donald Ramotar, has said that the budget is not a document for vision, because the vision of the Party, which is being concretized by the current Government, was outlined in the Party’s successive Manifestos.
According to Ramotar, the overarching vision of the Party is to build a modern society in which everyone can enjoy a high standard of living, a society without poverty, where social justice and equal opportunity for all exist, and the Government’s budgetary allocations in the various sectors merely serve as a facilitating tool to build the structures on which this vision can be concretized and solidify.
Ramotar decried the opposition’s wholesale criticism of the Budget, especially the Information Technology strategy of the Government, the Low Carbon Development Strategy, the Sugar Industry Turnaround Plan, among a plethora of other nebulous claims, accusations, and criticisms by the opposition collective.  He said in exasperation: “You criticize us and tell us that we should be producing new jobs, yet you are opposing something that can create thousands of jobs in this society – it really beats me to what type of rationale you are using in these types of opposition that you are making.”
Claiming that the criticisms of the opposition collective is “…opposition for opposition sake”, the PPP GS stated that there has been no constructive criticism of the Budget, and obliquely posited that there are grounds for none, because the 2010 Budget must be seen as a tool of modernization, and another step in the direction of realising the vision of an advanced and an all-round development of the country.
Ramotar, in making reference to the management of Guyana’s economy 2009, said that, despite global challenges, Guyana still managed to record a fourth consecutive positive growth, which he ascribes to prudent management of the country’s economy by the PPP administration.
This was achieved against a backdrop of primarily politically-motivated crime, which is intended to stymie national development and derail implementation of Government-engineered initiatives, and the challenges of the El Nino/La Nina phenomena, among others, including declining production in major industries in the nation, which is entirely due to external and climatic factors.
Alluding to a recent publication of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), entitled ‘Partners for Progress’, Ramotar says that this document paints a “great picture of how far we have come.”
At the conclusion of a six days’ debate on the 2010 National Budget last Monday evening, Finance Minister Ashni Singh chided the collective opposition and adjured them to remove their heads from the proverbial sand to be able to see the visible developments throughout the country.  He also stated that they had failed to make constructive criticisms.
He urged them to desist from the practice of the politics of distortion and deception to which they seem to have a proclivity.
Describing the Government’s undertaking and commitment to build a modern and prosperous Guyana as a “work still in progress,” the Minister stated that the progress of this work will be considerably aided if all Guyanese would add their bit to this effort, including the political opposition.
Minister Singh said: “Budget 2010 outlines a comprehensive agenda of programmes and projects aimed to advance this work, to grow our economy, to develop our country, and to improve the lives of all of our people.”
He flayed the opposition for failing to propose an alternative plan for the development of Guyana, saying that they instead bombarded Government functionaries with personal insults, jibes, and barbs.
This type of diatribe – a la Kissoon and some contributors to Stabroek News, impacts on the public psyche although unsubstantiated by factual data and lacks credible analytic content; so Christopher Ram concocted the toxic verbiage, Stabroek News published it, and Murray presented it Parliament as a vital part of his Budget debate.  Christopher Ram was present during that presentation by Murray to ensure that his coaching was not in vain, then left abruptly after Murray had finished his delivery.
During his comprehensive delivery, the Minister referred to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook, October 2009, which showed that, from the period 1991 to 2000 Guyana, with an average growth rate of 4.9 percent, was the sixth fastest growing economy in the 32 emerging and growing economies.  In 2009 the report showed that Guyana was the second fastest growing economy amongst the 32 emerging and developing economies in the Western Hemisphere.  Projections for 2010 were that Guyana will continue to be the second fastest growing economy after Peru, which he described as marginally more modest than what Guyana had projected.
Minister Singh also made mention of the recent IMF report, which stated, in reference to Guyana: “Despite external shocks and social pressures, macro-economic stability was preserved.  Directors commended the authority’s commitment to further entrench macro-economic stability, further strengthen the financial system and implement structural reforms.”
According to the Minister, the report further noted that Directors observed that direct spillovers from the global financial crisis on the banking system have so far been limited and welcomed the authority’s commitment to sustain the fiscal consolidation effort and the progress made in the area of fiscal reforms.
These are credible people with no personal agenda speaking in glowing terms of Guyana’s socio-economic imperatives and dynamics, so the skewed analyses and vituperative diatribes of the Rams, Murrays, Kissoons, the collective opposition media, et al, have, by the same measuring stick, scant integrity or credibility.
Minister Singh said
of the presentations of the collective opposition that what was on display was an Opposition that has a diametrically different view and a fundamentally flawed view of democracy, governance and government.
“An Opposition that is stuck in the past and that is backward-looking.  An Opposition that is removed from reality and oblivious to the global and regional contexts that obtain in the world today.  An Opposition that has very little, if anything, to offer in the effort to develop Guyana; but an Opposition that, nevertheless, is content to rely on distortion, manipulation, and misrepresentation of truth and fact in the cause of political expediency and in pursuit of their narrow political aim.”
The Christopher Ram/Stabroek News/Winston Murray composition of rhetorical hashish is a mere microcosm of the ludicrous mishmash of arguments that comprise the content of the collective opposition’s 2010 anti-Budget arguments.