MEMBERS of the political Opposition in Parliament are so power-drunk,

vindictive and unpatriotic with their one-vote, one-seat majority that they have no qualms about the regressive impacts their power-psycho displays would have on national development and the people’s welfare.
A typical example of this, it can be recalled, was when Moses Nagamootoo threatened the Government during the last budget Debate, even before the estimates were presented and considered, that the scissors that the joint Opposition used on the 2012 Budget would be replaced with an axe on the 2013 Estimates; and in 2012, when Khemraj Ramjattan callously dismissed concerns of workers’ lives being severely impacted by budget cuts with the remark that they are ‘collateral damage’.

After former President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo had precipitated a ‘force de tour’ in Guyana’s growth paradigm, with social development and economic growth at an unprecedented high and poised to touch the skies, came the disastrous elections of 2011, which gave the collective Opposition (APNU and AFC) a minute lead in Parliament.

That was enough for them to gleefully use that power invested in them by the people to conversely deny even their own supporters the benefits that would have accrued to the nation if the estimates had been allowed passage – in 2012 and 2013, without wasting time on lawsuits and court challenges, et al.

Guyana’s Parliament has become a charade, with a comedy of errors displayed at every sitting; with no care or concern that the parody being enacted in that once noble House is indeed making the people in the country ‘collateral damage.’

During its elections campaign, the PPP/C had warned the electorate that ‘a vote for the AFC is a vote for PNC/APNU’, but that dire warning was disregarded; hence the Parliamentary impasse and bullyism – a level of degeneracy that is inexorably depreciating the country’s achievements, with the developmental trajectory now pointing downwards – or backwards, and one recollects when dunces had to wear dunce caps.

Today, dunces make and prognosticate on the laws of the land, and make unconstitutional motions; but they are rewarded with many benefits, including  hefty stipends that are more than the salaries of most working-class people, duty-free vehicles (used for profiteering by at least one Opposition leader), and lavish meals and luxurious accommodation that reportedly costs the treasury an approximate Gy$2 million for each sitting, which they use as a playground for their ego-boosting games.

One cannot decide of all their idiotic actions and utterances since they (doubtfully) acquired their collective one vote/one-seat majority (collective being the operative word here), which of its actions have been more damaging to the country’s progress – taking into consideration the criminal, even murderous activities of their supporters, Linden, Agricola, et al; but this latest farce certainly ranks high on the scale.
Their voting down of the Amaila Falls hydropower Bill is certainly another display of their lack of patriotism and a revelation of their intention to stymie the steady progress achieved in the nation over the past two decades.
Voting against the Hydro-Electric Power (Amendment) Bill has certainly endangered the IFIs co-funding to enable Government’s efforts toward providing cheap, reliable and clean energy directly to the citizens of this country through service provision; and indirectly through impacts to costs of locally-manufactured and processed goods.
Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had warned that without parliamentary support on this bill, progress with the Amaila Falls Hydro Power (AFHP) project could be threatened, because of time-constraints on critical deadlines and expiration dates for funding of this and related projects.
The amendment to the Hydro-Electric Power Act would have increased the penalty for the breach of regulations made under the principal Act to $1M, and would have also conferred on the President the power to create hydro-electric offset reserve areas and rules for the establishment of the said areas, as well as for the conservation and preservation of the environment and ecosystem surrounding the hydroelectric resources in Guyana.
The Bill was read for the first time on June 13, and was scheduled to be read a second time on Thursday evening in expectation of a productive debate.
However, in what was clearly a prior joint decision, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) disregarded the Government’s pleas to at least debate the Bill, to the extent where the venerable Prime Minister and other Government MPs practically begged for the co-operation of the joint Opposition – all to no avail.

Prime Minister and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Hon. Samuel Hinds, who moved the second reading of the bill in the National Assembly, noted that the Opposition parties’ non-cooperation as it relates to the Hydro-Electric Power (Amendment) Bill is a clear indication of their opposition to a developmental initiative which would bring electricity rates down by more than 50 percent and protect the country against the volatility of oil prices.
“For the benefit of the people of Guyana, we are prepared to beg the Opposition to reconsider their position and support this bill,” PM Hinds stated.
During the recess, after PM Hinds had started the ball rolling on the debate, members of the Government and the Opposition parties discussed and deliberated for more than an hour on the way forward in dealing with the Hydro-Electric Power (Amendment) Bill.
However, upon resuming the sitting, Speaker of the National Assembly Mr. Raphael Trotman informed that many proposals were made, all of which he said had merit, but they were still unable to arrive at a compromise or consensus, which further reveals a diabolic complicity in a joint plan to derail the hydropower initiative.
There was no participation by the joint Opposition in the farcical “debate”, following which members of the APNU/PNC and the AFC voted against the second reading of the Bill.
After a division was called by the government side, the votes had initially amounted to 32 members against the motion for the second reading of the Bill and 31 for. However, after Government Chief Whip Gail Teixeira pointed out that one Opposition member had voted while he was not seated, that vote was not counted.
The results of the division were therefore adjusted to 31/31, representing a tie and the motion was still not carried.
The two leading private sector bodies, namely the Private Sector Commission (PSC) and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) had expressed their support for the project which they said would bring enormous benefits to the country as a whole. They had, on Wednesday last, called on all parliamentary stakeholders to support the passage of the Guarantee of Loans (Public Corporations and Companies) Act” and the Hydro-Electric Power (Amendment) Bill 2013 saying that failure to meet the July 30 deadline for the continuation of the AFHP project could result in higher costs for electricity and the collapse of Guyana’s fledgling manufacturing industry.

However they, as is their wont, blamed both Government and Opposition for the impasse, saying that Government should be more accommodating and magnanimous to the Opposition.
Well, if the Government is more magnanimous and accommodating to the Opposition than they have always been, then they may well hand over the full reins of the administration to them.  They fail to take the joint Opposition to task for all the nonsense that they are doing to impede the progress that has sustained a stable economy, from which they significantly benefit.

This fence-sitting by power-brokers in the country and their reluctance to call a spade  a spade and condemn the destructive actions of the Opposition is what empowers them and boost their arrogance, the resultant actions of which endanger the nation’s developmental trajectory and could very well bring a complete halt to the Amaila Falls hydro project.
President Donald Ramotar, commenting to the media afterwards, said that this is “a dark day for Guyana”.
Indeed it is!
However, the Inter-American Development bank (IDB) has recognised  the steady progress Guyana has been making in its developmental trajectory under the stewardship of a PPP/C government; as well as the prudent fiscal management of its affairs that has stabilised its macro-economic synergies.
In fact, the IDB and other international bodies have applauded this current Government’s management of the economy; and the world has recognised the significance and magnitude of the Amaila Falls hydro project, unlike the myopic, unpatriotic, venomous, vengeance-seekers in the Opposition.
IDB representatives were in Parliament and witnessed for themselves the recalcitrance of these pseudo leaders in the opposition who put self-serving agendas before the national good and it is highly likely that they would magnanimously support the project through compromising dispensations to enable the success of such a landmark project.