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 marks 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 that the 2012 budget is only one page of a programme that government hopes will transform the economic, social and physical landscapes of Guyana which, he asserted, is intended to make transformational changes in the lives and livelihoods of the Guyanese people, which is the ultimate aim of the PPP/C’s developmental plan – work that he posited has been in progress over the 19 years of PPP/C administration’s stewardship of the nation.
The progress that the government has made, claimed Nandlall, has been monumental, and stressed that for there to be an appreciation of the magnitude of this progress then it is necessary to re-visit 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.
He however argued that “unless we examine from where we started 20 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 opposition, including Greenidge, 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 the Clerk of the National Assembly for copies of Greenidge’s budget presentations, and was duly provided same by the clerk.
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 he contended is a fact that no one can dispute, which was a vain hope on his part because his 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 – 10 to one; 33 to one; from 33 to one to 101  one to one…”.
Responding to his own query on the expanse of the devaluation, Nandlall enumerated a few, among which were constant decline of the 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.
However, he maintained that “…these documents pronounced the economic death of Guyana”, emphasising 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, 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 the 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-payments 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 benefiting the people countrywide… “because 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 impact 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 emphasized, “We had to build the land up…make roads…dig drains….instal 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.”
And the foregoing is a minute part of Nandlall’s 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.