Cabinet concerned over Opposition sloth towards tripartite committee
CABINET remains committed to the highly-touted tripartite committee engagement, even after expressing concern over the sloth with which the majority opposition parties have moved to name their representatives for the convening so that their respective interests could be represented in Parliament.
This is according to Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon, who spoke about it yesterday at his weekly media briefing in Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown.
He declared that “opportunities continue to go a-begging for issues to be ventilated and for insights to be provided, prior to those matters being dealt with formally, whether at Parliament or at any other level,” as the sloth tactics were being played out.
Luncheon said Cabinet’s concerns were that the situation “was not as promising as originally conceived” following the declaration of the results of the General Elections in 2011 and the subsequent meeting involving President Donald Ramotar and Presidential Advisor on Governance Gail Teixeira with Brigadier (ret’d) David Granger and Joseph Harmon of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Raphael Trotman, Khemraj Ramjattan and Dominic Gaskin of the Alliance for Change (AFC).
Luncheon recalled that Cabinet had made public its reservation about the ‘behind the scenes’ collusion of APNU and AFC, an indication of which was the result of the most recent parliamentary elections.
The recent occurrence in Parliament saw the AFC joining forces with APNU to narrowly edge out the Government, which has a minority in the National Assembly, in its quest to have former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran retain the post.
Observing that the commitment made during that December engagement continues to be honoured in the breach, Luncheon said while APNU has, finally, provided the names of its “plenipotentiary and high representatives” in the names of Debra Backer and Joseph Harmon, up to the convening of Cabinet on Tuesday, the AFC had still not submitted theirs.
Mr. Gerhard Ramsaroop and Mr. Clayton Hall were, subsequently, submitted as AFC nominees.
Opposition Leader Granger, in his capacity as Presidential Candidate, had, before the recent convening of the 10th Parliament, made an urgent call for the establishment of the tripartite committee to oversee the preparation of the National Budget and subsequent budgets.
The 2012 National Budget must be presented to the House no later than March 30 and approved by April 29.
The combined opposition of APNU and the AFC have 33 seats while the Government has 32 seats (the largest single bloc of seats) in the Assembly and Granger has warned that it would be inadvisable for the Government to proceed with the Budget without prior consultation with the Opposition.
Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh has pointed out, though, that the PPP/C Government has always placed priority on consultations during the crafting of the budgetary proposals, contrary to some reports.