-says opposition diverting attention from substance of budget

VICE-PRESIDENT and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, said the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has been telling “half-truths” to divert the public’s attention from the “substance” of the 2017 budget.

Minister Greenidge took to the floor of the National Assembly by lashing out at the parliamentary Opposition in the presence of the President of the Caribbean Court of Justice Sir Dennis Byron, who was observing the debate along with his team from the CCJ.

Sir Byron was accompanied by the Registrar, Jacqueline Graham; the Chairman of CCJ Trust Fund, Dr. Linton Lewis; Vice-Chairman of the Trust Fund, Christine Sahadeo; Executive Officer of the Trust Fund Glenn Cheong; and CCJ Trustees Oswald Barnes and Ramesh Dookhoo.

Minister Greenidge, said the Opposition has been relentlessly repeating tales of alleged misbehaviour on the part of the Government.

“Nobody could miss the charges of malfeasance, inefficiency, irrational decision-making and burdensome fiscal imposition,” the Foreign Affairs Minister posited, as he alluded to the contentions being levelled by the PPP. However, he said while criticisms of budgets are nothing strange to the system, the Opposition has preoccupied itself in what he calls “national deconstruction.”

“We have been fed on a diet of half-truths,” Minister Greenidge told the National Assembly on Thursday. Citing an example, the Foreign Minister referenced a statement made earlier that day by a PPP Member of Parliament who had claimed that there was no young person within the Foreign Service.

“Astonishing,” Minister Greenidge said, as he shook his head in disbelief. “I want to say that the crocodile tears that are raised in relation to the indigenous communities are just that, but we have seen the croc in action. The tears fool no one; they don’t achieve the necessary racial division and bitterness at this point in time,” he emphasised.

Repeatedly, since demitting office, the PPP, he said, has been boasting of the positive growth which the economy experienced under its watch, but Greenidge, a former Finance Minister, said the party, for 23 years, had been bludgeoning the public with selective economic indicators.

Singling out the PPP’s Chief Whip Gail Teixeira, the Foreign Affairs Minister said he was “moved to tears” when the PPP frontbencher bemoaned the fact that no credit was given to the PPP Administration for the positive economic growth on which they ended their term in office.

“You know that is very strange – because they inherited a rate of economic growth of 6.7 per cent which continued for seven years and never once gave credit for that, taking all of the credit. Anything good, was the result of their work and anything bad was the result of the other side,” Minister Greenidge posited.

He further stated that,that thesis being peddled by the Opposition that real economic growth occurred only under the PPP “is of course a complete fabrication.”

What the PPP Chief Whip had failed to mention, Minister Greenidge said, were the many infractions made by the PPP.

“In the distinguished member’s statement, there was no mention of the illegal expenditures of the PPP; the constitutional breaches that sent the PPP Government before the courts in 2013 and 2014 or of the no-confidence vote or the constitutional action that led President Ramotar to prorogue the house,” he pointed out.

Additionally, he said it was under the PPP that the President was advised by the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister to withhold his assent from bills approved in the House.

This statement appeared to have angered the former Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister, Anil Nandlall, who shouted from across the room: “You are the most disgraced minister of economics this country has ever had!”

In expressing his dissatisfaction with the stand the PPP has taken in the debate, the Foreign Affairs Minister contended that the discussion of the budget is “couched and surrounded by a set of largely irrelevant issues,” – attempts to divert attention from the substance of the budget.