Coil: Loving Mr Granger while opposing the budget..

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

The first social media post I saw about the budget was from an ardent member of the PNC. She wanted to know how she will pay the GPL bills and where she will get money for the other increased prices.

I have a feeling that it was instinctive because afterwards she resumed posting her ‘I love Mr Granger’ kind of posts and ‘Doan fughet ,PPP is worse’ posts.

Nicole Cole is a Commissioner on the Women and Gender Equality Commission. She wrote a letter which was published the day after the budget She asked the same thing as my Facebook friend asked “How does the Finance Minister expect women to survive and care for these children with this 14% VAT imposition on water and light which will increase the cost of living?”

28 November 2011 was the day of the elections when the APNU and AFC parties started to make inroads on the PPP/c progress/oppression depending on who you voted for. It was a time that seemed that look, they could work together. They did not.

28 November 2016 was the day when the APNU+AFC coalition generated a lot of despair and anger and buyer’s remorse that Guyana will never change and that the politics are doomed.

Slap-and-strip-bheri’s people were doing the ‘I told you so thing’ while other people were frantically trying to look for hope and praying fervently that this disruption and disturbance was like when Burnham banned flour.. all for the greater good.

More Money for the People to pay for less things

“The DPI was wrong” – was the tone of some of the posts from sensible people who tried to calculate the new taxes and interpret Mr Jordan’s explanation that there would ‘More Money in the Pocket for the People’

There were some beautiful blue, green and white coloured pictures which the Department of Public Information (I like to say Illusions) had prepared and shared around but the calming blue did not help out.

I recalculated my taxes, and checked back with GPL bills and found that the tax saved would have to be used to pay GPL with the VAT. I think I was correct in my calculations.

Value Added Tax (VAT) and more money for the same things

The Government wants more money from VAT. VAT is confusing and people might have wondered why the big deal with moving items from zero-rated to vat-exempt. The credible prediction is that the increased costs of electricity to businesses would be passed on to consumers.

The Ram & McRae Focus on Guyana’s National Budget 2017 used a shopping list and did some modelling and predicted that people spending on VAT would increase by 155% and overall spending by 7.3% for the same things.

It as though the Government has given with one hand and taken back with three.

University of Guyana lecturer Lenandlar Singh did a spreadsheet to compare some values of tax and net income under the current and proposed systems. I added a column to look at percentage increase in the money in the pocket.

The percentage increase in available income to spend for those earning is less than 3% for persons earning a gross of 760,000 a month or less. Persons earning between 760,000 and 1,000,000 will have a 5% increase.

The Ministry of Finance and the APNU+AFC supporters could have a different shopping basket from the people at Ram & McRae so that things will look as rosy and hopeful as the beautiful blue and green and white images with Minister Jordan on them.

The question asked by Ms Nicole Cole in her letter is a valid one .

I would not have bothered with the budget since there isn’t anything I can do about it.

But, the most disturbing thing about the budget speech though was the viciousness towards any critique or opposition to it.

The cussing up about the increase in VAT was seen as a betrayal of Mr Granger and an allegiance with slap-and-strip-bheri’s people.

Three people I know who are not supporters of slap-and-strip-bheri and his people had to stand up for themselves. They had to say that not because they criticising the budget means that they are Hailing Jagdeo.

It was frightening when it seems that between elections, the electorate and people who voted do not keep fire under the feet of those they voted for.

One woman told me it was as though there was bullying to silence any questioning of poor people paying the reduced VAT , but on more items, to ensure that the Ministers and a few others enjoy the good life amongst other things.

In October 2015 Prime Minister Nagamootoo endeared himself more to his supporters by declaring that “Government Ministers deserve higher salaries to avoid reduced earnings”,

According to Henry Jeffrey, writing in his Future Notes Column in Stabroek News of 30 November, 2016 :-

“…For example, in 1992 when the minimum wage was $3,127, the PM’s salary was $29,000 or about 7 times the minimum wage. Today with a minimum wage of $50,000 the PM’s salary is more than 30 times the minimum wage. “

By the time the PPP/C left government in 2015, the minimum wage was about $40,000 but a cabinet minister was earning $579,000, not 7 as in 1992 but 14.5 times the minimum wage. As if this was not enough, the APNU+AFC regime lost no time in making their mark in this regard. The minimum wage is $50,000 per month and a cabinet minister’s salary was raised to $870,000 – some 17.4 times 

the minimum wage! ..“

(When I am lucky to claim payment for work, I claim at 10 times the minimum wage based on the hourly rate paid by the University of Guyana’s rate paid for part time lecturers.)

The Ministers continue enjoying their not-so-reduced earnings and enjoying the good life which many are waiting on. Some Ministers have already been asking people to conserve more on water and electricity.

It would be nice if they showed the lead and also committed by demonstration of their own light bills, how they are reducing our GPL payments on their behalf.

I could imagine beautiful blue and white images from the DPI.. “Minister xyz has achieved a 3% reduction in his or her light bill this month” and so there is more money available to improve services for you all “ or Minister xyz continues to reduce light ill by turning off lights earlier and waking up with sunrise to make maximum use of the available daylight. “

Solar energy

Instead of paying slap-and-strip-bheri’s boss and Champion of the Earth’s Mr Jagdeo’s light bill , why don’t wel invest in a solar system and pay off the instalments to Demerara Bank who said they had a three years return on investment on their investment.

That way two years of light bill plus VAT could be saved before 2020.

In fact, heck.. let all the current politicians – President, Prime Minister, Ministers etc who hope that the taxpayers of the future will keep them in suitable style and dignity and pay their light bills plus VAT , mandate solar energy systems.

Speculations..

So what is happening? Did somebody hack into Minister Jordan’s computer and change his speech?

Did the Government think that with slap-and-strip-bheri’s people having their congress that they will be too busy with infighting for power there and that since many of them are no longer poor, they would not be able to number crunch and figure the nice images to counter the beautiful green,white and blue ones from the DPI of the Prime Minister who earns 30 times per month more than some of the people who will have to help pay his salary while increasing their expenditure?

Did the Government hope that Christmas , Donald Trump and Prince Harry would distract from the budget and that nobody would notice?

Is there somebody working in the APNU+AFC to make sure that slap-and-strip-bheri’s people don’t have to work too hard to win elections again.

My ears are ringing from the angry shouts of ‘Is only Jagdeo gun bring dis back’ and ‘dat is nah de change you want? Well you gat am”

(I did not vote)’.

There is no ‘how the heck do we stop pretending that we can only vote and live in hope and then despair and then then vote again and hope and despair and keep the cycle going round and round’.

So how to love Mr Granger while opposing the budget?

There is some human condition which manifests itself in Guyana from time to time in terms of people and their leaders. People put their faith absolutely in the leaders they choose and do not realise that there is a contract for accountability and for justice.

Pope Emmanuel’s behaviour was atrocious. What was more sad was the acceptance of that abuse by his congregation.

So it is when the people voted for slap-and-strip-bheri and other people who have demonstrated their contempt for women – 202,694 in 2015, 36,354 more than in 2011.

The New York times carried an Op-Ed about The Art of the Protest in response to the election of Donald Trump, a strange article but no doubt some despair that there will be building of movements and alliances to deal with the manifestation of Trumps values.

The protests against Trump seem to have died down in the US.

When the Ministers raised their salaries to deal with their reduced earnings, Red Thread and a few others did protested (in real life, not on social media). Some of the supporters objected to the protests. (Jagdeo was worse they said)

Nothing happened, the Ministers continue to live the good life which Minister Raphael Trotman said recently is available if people stop complaining.

Red Thread and a few others protested the refusal of Minister Volda Lawrence to work for an independent resolution of the allegations of child sexual abuse made against her colleague.

Nothing happened. Both Minister Lawrence and her colleague continue to enjoy the good life.

Not many people bothered to join the protests.

Ram & McRae’s Focus on Guyana’s National Budget 2006 ,had this to say about the then Imperial President Jagdeo

“Assuming, as is likely, that he is returned for another term he would best serve the country by acting

more deliberately, working towards repairing some of the fissures created during his presidency and

avoiding been seen as an autocrat and a dictator with a modest record of achievement.”

Ram & McRae’s Focus on the Budget 2017 states that “The APNU+AFC earned its razor-thin, one seat majority after the public and the electorate had become completely disenchanted with the corrupt practices of the PPP/C Government. President Granger had an impeccable record for decency, the APNU’s major coalition partner the Alliance for Change was strong on rhetoric and the WPA, though not an electoral force in its own right, enjoyed credibility among the electorate.

Yet, one and a half years into the administration the APNU+AFC government is fighting a battle to preserve its collective reputation after a series of steps that raise doubts about its integrity and that of its leading players.

The situation has been developing for some time since the Government reneged on its commitment to

significantly increase public sector wages and salaries while giving itself a substantial 50% increase and then arrogantly claiming that it has no apology to make.”

In the space of a decade, it seems that good governance seems elusive.

In Guyana, resistance to power and the resistance to the abuse of power are seen as allegiance with partisan political agenda. This is easy to do when the five years between elections is not used as space to reinforce the principles of good governance and to reject party loyalty as the sole duty of citizenship. The punishment for bad governance cannot be switching between two evils – no matter how lesser they may seem to be at the time.

GTT has indicated they would have to pass on costs of their additional tax burden to the consumers, the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association and the Guyana Women Miners Organisation believe the budget would kill the mining sector.

Naysayers have been accused of ignoring the ‘exciting’ things in the budget. The manipulation of good and bad is how the powerful tend to manipulate those who have consented to that power.

Countering the budget proposals requires skills and knowledge , it requires data. The capacity is not easy outside of the Government. Data is a problem – the crime data continues to be contested.

Countering the budget proposals requires imagination of alternate scenarios to deal with the economic conditions.

There is an ‘Innovation Fund’ mentioned in the budget speech, but no real commitment to institutionalising innovation. The Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology seems to operate in great secrecy. One letter in the newspapers asked for investigations into the operations of IAST, but there was no response from the Government.

IAST could be rejuvenated as a publicly accessible, non-partisan entity which could stimulate innovation and which could work with citizens to move ideas to products.

The budget seems to have some concessions for those interested in solar energy – but there is no news of how training could be deployed and standardised for those who might be interested in micro business services, if any to provide solar and alternative energies.

Since I started buying soursop juice last year, the price remained steady. There was no juice when soursop was not available. I had suspected sometimes that the juice was made up with soursop flavoured Turbo C/ Mak C . The price rose by 20% this week and the young woman smiled when I asked why.

A man who sells newspapers said “I not able wid budget because I don’t understand it”

He said that when he goes to the shop next year , he will buy less things than he could this year.

He is diabetic, and he probably does not realise that the cost of his diabetic testing kit and strips will increase.

The response to this budget is an opportunity for citizens to show that the good life should be the right of all citizens, and not only those who align themselves with triumphant political parties. It would require citizens recognise that loving their leaders means demanding accountability and equal treatment as part of that love.