–Jagdeo slams APNU/AFC for ‘delusional, dishonest, visionless’ contributions to Budget 2025 debate

GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Bharrat Jagdeo has criticised the APNU/AFC parliamentarians for their ‘mediocre’ and ‘contradictory’ presentations during the budget debate which concluded on Friday.
Although budget debating is crucial, since it sets a vision for the future, the General Secretary, during his weekly press conference on Thursday, said the Opposition is “visionless.”
The budget debate on the $1.38 trillion budget began last week Friday and concluded yesterday.

The presentations by the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Parliamentarians were riddled with conflicting policies, which raised doubts about their ability to offer a cohesive front, Jagdeo said.
He related: “Everyone is announcing policy, from the most junior Member of Parliament to the most senior one. From AFC to APNU, they’re all saying what they will do. So often what they announce is contradictory.”

While labelling them as “dysfunctional,” Jagdeo said that the opposition parliamentarians’ presentations were an example of how they performed in office from 2015-2020.
Although the Opposition is guilty of firing the 2,000 Community Service Officers (CSOs), several Parliamentarians, within the past week, from the opposition have attempted to shift the blame.
“Downright dishonest” is how Jagdeo defined the rhetoric from the opposition.
“They’re attempting to rewrite history,” he said.

Also, the Opposition criticised the government for investing in infrastructure, yet, as Jagdeo pointed out, their contributions in parliament are contradicting their stance.
“You can’t build a ring road that would be ten times the amount that we’re receiving from the oil and gas sector,” Jagdeo said, while responding to one parliamentarian’s infrastructure suggestion.
Given the level of incoherency and lofty promises, Jagdeo asked how one could take the Opposition seriously.

Further, the General Secretary said that the portrait the Opposition is painting that they performed well as a government in 2015-2020 is “delusional.”
“That is a healthy dose of cognitive disease,” he lamented, while blazing them for dodging accountability regarding their attempt to hijack Guyana’s democracy in the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
Also, rebutting the constant position by the Opposition that Guyana’s debt is too high, the General Secretary said the debt is stable.
“We’re not borrowing to consume, we’re borrowing to build the infrastructure of the future,” he said.

Owing to prudent management by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government, the total Public and Publicly Guaranteed (PPG) debt-to-GDP ratio has been reduced from 47.4 per cent at the end of 2020 to 24.3 per cent at the end of 2024.
Under the People’s National Congress (PNC), Guyana was characterised by a significant debt-service burden, when the country’s debt was once nine times the size of the economy and the country was using over 100 per cent of revenue to service debt.
However, Guyana has since gained better footing and is no longer facing a crippling debt-servicing crisis.

He also said that investments are being made to support every Guyanese in various areas such as health and education.
While the Opposition, in office from 2015-2020, focused on benefitting themselves, Jagdeo said that the PPP/C is working to better the lives of all, including public servants and providing jobs, which the opposition failed to do.
Additionally, undertones of racism and elitism were also observed in the Opposition parliamentarians’ presentations by Jagdeo.

He said: “There’s always an underlying tone of discrimination in some of their presentations,” adding: “They are racist and elitist… and they try to distract the public with these old, worn-out accusations of corruption.”
The Opposition raised concerns about corruption; however, Jagdeo highlighted the irony since a number of those parliamentarians were embroiled in allegations of corruption.
“I didn’t pay attention to all the individual performances but this is what I saw… it’s a mediocre performance and they are not ready for the big league of running a country… and not because they are bad people, they are just clueless,” Jagdeo said.