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If anyone from anywhere had said to me that in a trillion-dollar budget for Guyana, there would be the pittances of pennies for the poor people of Guyana, I would have ignored as a huge falsehood. If anyone had said that this is what the PPP Government would have as its standout provisions for the struggling citizens of this country, my reaction would have been: no way. Just cannot be. Not with all that is coming in, not with all that is already in the hands of the government. Not even the people who call the shots in the PPP Government, as dastardly as some of them are, can be capable of such torturous constructions, such damaging arrangements and dispiriting provisions. I stand humbled and corrected, most sharply so.
Though the worst was expected in the budget for 2024, nothing can surpass the ugliness, the sliminess, and the sickness that is incorporated into this year’s national financial blueprint. It is what yokes many Guyanese more firmly into poverty, and all that such a condition involves. The government is talking about over a trillion dollars for a budget ($1.146 trillion) and in the low single digit thousands ($3,000 and $5,000) for assistance to Guyanese feeling the hard, punishing, squeezes of cost-of-living. More accurately, it is the cost of surviving, which is closer to the reality of those outside the circle of people having a whale of a time with oil money and budget money and spending money.
This is not cruelty run amok, it is a crime of unmatched savagery that batters the Guyanese people. They are in no condition to take any more blows, to absorb any more punishment from a crippling environment that lays them to waste. A real unsparing look at $3,000 more for pensioners and those with disabilities, and $5,000 more for the parents of schoolchildren, in a bigger than trillion-dollar budget, points to government utter disgracefulness that has reached new depths of degradation. It is where the thinking of the government, and the visions of its key people, are what reduces it to that of a common practitioner of that long-known trade of the evening that takes place in the dark corners of streets and hidden alleyways. This is how the PPP Government sullies itself with $3,000 for this group, another handful of thousands for another group of pensioners (NIS), and the five fingers of one hand (yes, I said that -five fingers) representing the thousands for the children.
It is now obvious beyond any doubt that this oil patrimony has made financial perverts of many in the PPP Government. If money with meaning, with what makes a difference, cannot be set aside now from that trillion-dollar budget for Guyanese compelled to their knees by a harsh and hardscrabble environment, then when can it be? When will such ever be hoped to come to past? The budget went up by almost half, when compared to last year, and there is no doubling up for Guyanese, as measured against the same timeframe. From my perspective, the people of this country have the strongest chins that can be imagined. They can absorb brutal blows, and without any objection. Furthermore, it is clear that Guyanese have stomachs of steel, given the garbage from a greedy government that they swallow with a smile on their faces.
We have made a living talking about how greedy Exxon is, when it takes an unmoving stand over renegotiating the 2016 oil contract. I would contend that there is an entity that is greedier and more ghoulish than Exxon, and it is the PPP Government. It is so when it does the things that it did under the banner of relief for hobbling, straggling Guyanese. If anyone is desirous of, is comforted by, numbers, I furnish a tiny handful of them. This year’s budget is 46 percent more than last year’s ($1.146 trillion versus $789.1 billion). The minister said that over $70 billion is the reward for Guyanese for their patience, their understanding, and their expectations. When $70 billion is placed next to $1.146 trillion, it is not only that assistance from government is a dwarf, but it is a mere 6.1 percent (inches) of substance.
A government that says that it is for the people with numbers like these either has to be hallucinating or trapped in the stranglehold of some powerful unknown spirit. Putting on a PPP cap, the masses of Guyana represent an unwanted expense, a cost center that could weigh down if not dealt with coldly and dismissively. In the next instance, millions and billions for infrastructure has proven potential for profits. Put the money in infrastructure, and untold juicy millions come back to those who made those decisions. In an environment as crooked as this, as lopsided as this, then the poor and fatigued of Guyana don’t stand a chance. They get the budgets that they get, and with them they have no choice but to live. This is the curse of oil, which has been seen before in many other places so endowed. This is the crime and curse of governments and politicians and leaders-the worst of the worst-on the people, who expect so much, and end up with so little.
After all these record budgets, and all this oil money, the Guyanese people are exactly where they have been before. A less than complete pot. A less than full stomach. A less than satisfied family. And community. And country. In the sum of all of its gaudy numbers, the 2024 trillion-dollar budget manages no more than those revealing and intolerable conditions in the lives of Guyanese at the bottom. Such are the crimes of government. Such are the times of oil, notwithstanding all of its promise, grand magnificence. Some promise this has turned out to be, some return to the people of Guyana.