WITNESSING the debate in Parliament which the 2012 budget has engendered in our democracy can only be good for Guyana. Mr. Basil Williams as APNU’s shadow Minister of Legal Affairs is rightly concerned that more judges and legal staff should be in the Attorney General’s Chambers. Mr. Williams cannot be faulted for advocating more staff for justice. He has a point. But can anyone be surprised that APNU’s finance shadow Minister Mr. Carl Greenidge (politicking?), is advocating more, not staff, but more pay for public servants?  What is also more significant is where an incompetent, former Commissioner of Police Mr. Winston Felix can only now conveniently concede that he failed to effectively stamp out the Buxton Taliban (dubbed Freedom Fighters by WPA”s Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye) facilitating Mr. Shaheed Roger Khan’s engagement in an office where the illustrious Police Commissioner was empowered but yet failed to succeed. Mr. Felix also admitted that he had dealings with the drug dealer.
Even so, can the rising, contradictory clamour by APNU to slash the Value Added Tax (VAT) be reconciled with their demands for the lucrative PPP/C fiscal managed proceeds to be shared out as they prioritise? Nevertheless, the PPP/C has only itself to blame and must be held accountable for failing to substantially increase the money that the poor and aged should be getting. It is not fair in a country poised to discover oil. It was the same nowadays poor and aged who only yesterday (same 28 years plus 20 PPP/C years) that faced the brunt of 28 years of PNC fiscal mismanagement, food deprivation and fraud of which the PPP/C usually reminded us.
One can understand why Mr. Felix, now, has no reservations to advocate more money for the police force in his open alignment with a militarised APNU. But how would his elevation to APNU power and control of the police be any different or redeeming? Mr. David Granger controlling Guyana’s army buttressed with Mr. Felix commanding the police force can only be a frightening proposition of back to a PNC future given their dismal record. Indeed, the moral advocacy of more resources for the police by an admitted failure compared to Commissioner Greene who successfully reduced crime can only be a foregone conclusion. In any event the historical ineptitude of the PNC to successfully manage Guyana’s finances is certainly not reassuring.
Apparently Mr. Felix has now recovered (or has not forgotten) about Mr. Khan’s taping and publicising of his shenanigans in the press; the same Mr. Khan who successfully conjoined with the Guyana US embassy in retrieving one of their kidnapped diplomats from Buxton when all was honky dory with those two and Mr. Felix could not deliver. In other words, Mr. Felix finds the US government blameless for ‘hiring” the drug dealer, but the PPP/C is guilty of any association. Even as he happily feels exonerated in his own self-admitted dealings with the drug dealer. Any explanation why Guyanese admire Mr. Roger Khan as a folk hero and view the Felixes otherwise cannot be clearer. When the Buxton Taliban set an Enterprise Muslim mourner afire at his family’s funeral wake, massacred innocent and  defenceless Bartica policemen and Lusignan men, women and degutted their children, they were not intent on robbery and plunder; it was an act of acidic political defiance directed against the PPP/C government’s Indian supporters. Outraged Lusignan villagers who blocked traffic and burned tyres also brandished placards demanding “we want Roger Khan” as if he was their Robin Hood hero.
This entire APNU clamour for more money is quite a contrast to the old timer PPP defectors now with the AFC. Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan wants all NCIL money to be transferred to the Consolidated Fund for proper scrutiny and accountability. On the other hand, a fading glory Mr. Moses Nagamootoo, seems to be on automatic pilot in championing more money for all of Guyana’s pensioners and the aged. While former President Jagdeo has a gifted prowess in economic and political management of Guyana’s resources, he has also evidenced a significant disconnect with both his party supporters and the Guyanese public. He never reportedly mixed with the grassroots in New York, Toronto and London on his frequent trips abroad unlike his mentors, the Jagans who held public, frequent exchanges with Guyanese.
It is this disconnect which explains why he failed to substantially increase the funds to pensioners and the aged long before he left office. Only President Ramotar can urgently correct this blight and rescue the PPP/C’s record of committed service to the poor and downtrodden. Whatever the AFC does to capitalise on this PPP/C’s disconnect can still shape Guyana’s future, especially in its situational esconcement as APNU’S underwear. Without the AFC’s electoral armoury, the militarised APNU gun is impotent. The AFC’s wings can make APNU fly; the PPP/C also needs those wings to get moving.
Championing and implementing the racial balance of Guyana’s armed forces is the AFC’s amphibious vehicle to enhance its profile amongst PPP supporters. Both Mr. Ramjattan and Mr. Nagamootto cannot have suddenly forgotten what they always knew and advocated. Already Mr. Raphael Trotman’s black supporters have absconded back to APNU with dim hopes of returning. Maybe the PPP/C is not equipped to do what is necessary to balance the armed forces. Their misreading of the political trend of Guyanese in the 2011 elections explains why they are now a minority government.
In any case, any political tsunami, at any future general elections which the PPP/C actually believes will sweep them back to power would require an earthquake to significantly catalyse such a dramatic change. Let’s see when and how this will occur.