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THERE is an opposition party’s claim that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) is now an accountable and responsible government to the National Assembly, the courts, media, and the public, even though the public is still awaiting any benefits coming to them. If the public is still starved of their rightful benefits, what good then is responsibility and accountability? That aside, however, transforming the PPP/C Government’s behaviour to becoming accountable and responsible is a claim of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) which apportioned itself credit for this accomplishment, and, indeed, as an afterthought, assigned token credit to the Alliance For Change (AFC).
APNU’s benchmarks for its parliamentary success are cutting budgets of a few agencies and extracting some audit reports. Nevertheless, the few budget cuts and audit reports are not sufficient to warrant APNU’s bold conclusion and, more importantly, to explain this dramatic transformation of PPP/C’s political behaviour.
On the contrary, the PPP/C may well argue that it is already an accountable and responsible government, using yardsticks of budget cuts and audit reports. It is this same government that regularized annual public audit reports when it took office in 1992, so presence/absence of audit reports for this year as a basis for determining accountability and responsibility should not be such a huge issue.
Moreover, the PPP/C could present its case to demonstrate that all along, it has been an accountable and responsible government on the basis of yardstick other than budget cuts and audit reports. The PPP/C does have a developmental record over the last 20 years to defend. Perhaps, this author can present this record for discussion at another time.
Furthermore, previous parliaments from 1992 did ask for audit reports from some agencies and did obtain them. The point is that there is nothing spectacular about the current opposition-led parliament’s accomplishments. What this opposition-led parliament considers as accomplishments were achieved by previous parliaments in varying degrees, and those previous parliaments, 1992 through 2011, did not carry an oppositional majority. And so, today the public must question this opposition-led parliament’s performance on its capacity to contribute to the nation’s development.
For APNU to conclude that that it has now made the PPP/C Administration accountable and responsible in only one year of parliamentary sittings is an oversimplification, as political behaviour change is hardly likely to happen through simple budget cuts and a few audit reports; and certainly not over one year.
In addition, APNU has not presented to the public any assessment and observation of this political behaviour change. At the minimum, to avoid any premature and false conclusions on political behaviour change, APNU would have to assess PPP/C’s intentions on accountability and responsibility and also assess whether or not PPP/C sees itself as having control over the process of becoming accountable and responsible. As previously mentioned, the PPP/C would dismiss APNU’s conclusion that it has made the PPP/C Government accountable and responsible.
It is clear that the opposition-led parliament’s achievements over this year are minimum, and therefore, APNU’s conclusion of making the PPP/C government accountable and responsible may be its defense of not achieving much for the public.
This is how Obama, on behalf of his minority government (the PPP/C is currently a minority government) talked about his mid-term Congress, “If Congress does nothing, then it’s not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town…I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can’t campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress” (Bloomberg).
The combined opposition, APNU and AFC, with a majority in parliament, has full facility to realize the numerous promises they made to the nation. And the nation should hold them to such pledges. Perhaps, if fulfillment of the promises remains immaterialized, then Guyanese will have a do-nothing parliament, not only in 2012, which already is the case, but also in 2013.
APNU’s benchmarks for its parliamentary success are cutting budgets of a few agencies and extracting some audit reports. Nevertheless, the few budget cuts and audit reports are not sufficient to warrant APNU’s bold conclusion and, more importantly, to explain this dramatic transformation of PPP/C’s political behaviour.
On the contrary, the PPP/C may well argue that it is already an accountable and responsible government, using yardsticks of budget cuts and audit reports. It is this same government that regularized annual public audit reports when it took office in 1992, so presence/absence of audit reports for this year as a basis for determining accountability and responsibility should not be such a huge issue.
Moreover, the PPP/C could present its case to demonstrate that all along, it has been an accountable and responsible government on the basis of yardstick other than budget cuts and audit reports. The PPP/C does have a developmental record over the last 20 years to defend. Perhaps, this author can present this record for discussion at another time.
Furthermore, previous parliaments from 1992 did ask for audit reports from some agencies and did obtain them. The point is that there is nothing spectacular about the current opposition-led parliament’s accomplishments. What this opposition-led parliament considers as accomplishments were achieved by previous parliaments in varying degrees, and those previous parliaments, 1992 through 2011, did not carry an oppositional majority. And so, today the public must question this opposition-led parliament’s performance on its capacity to contribute to the nation’s development.
For APNU to conclude that that it has now made the PPP/C Administration accountable and responsible in only one year of parliamentary sittings is an oversimplification, as political behaviour change is hardly likely to happen through simple budget cuts and a few audit reports; and certainly not over one year.
In addition, APNU has not presented to the public any assessment and observation of this political behaviour change. At the minimum, to avoid any premature and false conclusions on political behaviour change, APNU would have to assess PPP/C’s intentions on accountability and responsibility and also assess whether or not PPP/C sees itself as having control over the process of becoming accountable and responsible. As previously mentioned, the PPP/C would dismiss APNU’s conclusion that it has made the PPP/C Government accountable and responsible.
It is clear that the opposition-led parliament’s achievements over this year are minimum, and therefore, APNU’s conclusion of making the PPP/C government accountable and responsible may be its defense of not achieving much for the public.
This is how Obama, on behalf of his minority government (the PPP/C is currently a minority government) talked about his mid-term Congress, “If Congress does nothing, then it’s not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town…I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can’t campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress” (Bloomberg).
The combined opposition, APNU and AFC, with a majority in parliament, has full facility to realize the numerous promises they made to the nation. And the nation should hold them to such pledges. Perhaps, if fulfillment of the promises remains immaterialized, then Guyanese will have a do-nothing parliament, not only in 2012, which already is the case, but also in 2013.
