WITH a track record that included adding 200 new taxes, removing the “Because We Care” cash grant for parents, taking away the one month bonus for soldiers, and closing several sugar estates that put over 7,000 Guyanese out of work, the APNU+AFC is not qualified to lecture the government on areas of good governance, and putting citizens first.

These were just some of the points highlighted by the Prime Minister, Brigadier Mark Phillips, on Friday, as he took former Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Harmon to task during his contribution to the 2022 budget.

Preceding the PM on the floor, Harmon, the final speaker for the APNU+AFC opposition, delivered a one hour address where he defended his non-support for the 2022 budget, saying it “had nothing for the ordinary Guyanese” and questioned the government’s governance structure that impacted the budget, and the “One Guyana” policy of inclusion for all Guyanese.

However, as he rose and gave his unwavering assent to the Budget 2022, Prime Minister Phillips called Harmon out on several claims he made in his address.

“How can you come and lecture us about a budget that does not provide for the people of Guyana? A budget that provides $600,000 for everybody who has to do dialysis,” the PM questioned.

Prime Minister Phillips reminded that it was the APNU+AFC that talked the talk but did not walk the way of putting Guyanese first during their time in office, after they quickly unleashed a slew of added taxes on the Guyanese populace during their 2015 – 2020 reign in office.
“The APNU+AFC are brazen to come here and talk about housing, salary increase, pension, climate change, democracy and many other issues that they ought not have the audacity to speak about,” PM Phillips charged.

“This is the same parliamentarians, who in a previous government increased 200 taxes and other forms of payments that have affected the lives of all the people of Guyana. This is the same government that increased the licence for the donkey cart man, placed a tax on education, tax on health, tax on drugs. They had a philosophy of tax and spend economics. You promised more disposable income for people but that was a fallacy, you tax the people into submission and they voted you out of office.”

Brigadier Phillips questioned how the same APNU+AFC members, who claimed to have the best interest of the Guyanese people at heart, were the same people who put the sugar workers out of work, and took away the “Because We Care” cash grant.

“When the Coalition won the election and one of the first things they did was to remove that. They claimed they had no fiscal space but they had fiscal space to utilise money to enrich themselves and live the good life, that they promised to all the people of Guyana. We have since returned the ‘Because We Care’ cash grant,” Phillips said, to cheers from the government side of the House.

The Prime Minister also called out the APNU+AFC over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic when it first reached Guyana, when only selected testing was administered.

Prime Minister Phillips also went in on Harmon’s remarks about the National Resource Fund (NRF), through which funding from Guyana’s oil and gas industry is handled.

He reminded that the APNU+AFC still cannot properly account for the $18 million signing bonus that they received and saddled the country with a lopsided production sharing agreement with ExxonMobil.