The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government included in Budget 2020, a suite of measures geared at reversing a number of taxation procedures imposed by the former A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) administration during the last five years. In order to enable these reversals, several bills have been laid in the parliament, and are being debated. But the APNU+AFC party has opted not to attend, prompting the Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, to respond.
During his presentation in the House moments ago, the AG said that the bills are solely geared at bringing relief to the people. He reminded that it was the Coalition government that imposed these measures, and for the party not to be present to justify their reason for doing so, speaks volumes and can be seen as “taking the easy way out”.
Nevertheless, the Minister said that the non-attendance of the main Parliamentary Opposition will not deter the government from fulfilling its promises to the citizenry.
“That will not discourage us. We are not here to do a presentation for them (Coalition),” Nandlall said.
The Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Harmon made it clear this morning that the Coalition will not be attending the debates of these bills.
He said that during the debate and consideration of the budget estimates last week, the APNU+AFC made it clear that the budget ignored the poor and average man and woman of Guyana and will make life more difficult.
“As we have maintained from the inception, the budget is defective, divisive and deceptive…These bills belatedly seek to have debates on the matters which we already debated, but extract those measures which seek to show a soft side of an extremely harsh budget for the ordinary Guyanese man and woman,” he said.
Harmon stated that the APNU+AFC “will not be part of another attempt by the PPP/C to deceive the Guyanese people”.
“In the circumstance, we believe that the interest of the Guyanese people will not be served by our attendance and further debate on measures in this ‘anti-working class’ budget today”, he concluded.
