THE Government has rejected what it termed the “baseless and false propaganda” of the opposition PPP that the proposed financial allocations for constitutional commissions and agencies for 2017 have been maliciously reduced from the 2016 budgeted amounts. In a statement issued by the Department of Public Information, government said while the law clearly provides for government to recommend reasonable amounts for constitutional bodies in keeping with what is affordable, of the 16 listed constitutional agencies, only one (GECOM) has a reduced allocation. “The reason for the reduced allocation is completely logical and eminently sensible. Both 2015 and 2016 were election years. 2017 is not an election year. Therefore, it cannot be expected that the GECOM allocation for a non-election year would be greater than its budget for election years,” the statement read. Budget estimates for Constitutional Agencies were presented a few weeks ago to the parliamentarians for perusal and ultimate deliberations today. However, on Monday with support from her party members, Anil Nandlall and Juan Edghill, Chief Whip of the PPP, Gail Teixeira accused Government of attempting to weaken and undermine the constitutional bodies. She argued that constitutional agencies ought to be provided with the requested amount of finances, noting that the “slashing of the requested budget to less than what was received in 2016 is highly unacceptable.”
Teixeira, a former government minister, told reporters about cuts to the budgets for Parliament Office, the Auditor General’s Office, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), the Supreme Court , the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Indigenous People’s Commission to name a few. However, except GECOM, all of the other agencies received increased allocations.
In its statement,the DPI said in the case of two agencies – the Public Service Appellate Tribunal and the Judicial Service Commission – the budgeted amounts for 2016 and 2017 are exactly the same (see attached chart). There is a new head – the Public Procurement Commission – which has been provisionally allocated $76.2M in the 2017 budget estimates for the establishment and functioning of this agency.
“Therefore, the Coalition Government is recommending increases in the 2017 budget estimates for 12 of the 16 constitutional agencies. The Coalition Government calls on the Opposition PPP to act responsibly and to desist from wilfully seeking to mislead the Guyanese public and using the constitutional agencies for political theatre.” Government said during the PPP’s tenure in office, notoriously under the governments of Presidents Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, a stubborn refusal was shown to give block sums to bodies such as the judiciary.
“They never amended the law to allow this. The reason why the former government did not permit the independence of these agencies in keeping with the intention of the Guyana constitution, was clear and evident. The PPP government used finances as a weapon of manipulation of these bodies. The Coalition Government is proud of its record of elevating the constitutional bodies to their status of financial autonomy, and for respecting the time-honoured principles of the separation of powers and the supremacy of the constitution,” the statement said.