By GHK Lall- Feeling all stressed out? Just hang in there, help is on the way. Down in the dumps, with the blues wailing at high volume? Don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright. I have just the remedy for Guyanese who find themselves trapped in a vortex, while yoked on a treadmill. It’s easy as a Sunday morning, which Lionel Richie parlayed into a cash bonanza.
All that despondent Guyanese have to do is take a peek at the 2025 budget debate(s), and their troubles will vanish. I guarantee it. Though having never looked at a local budget, and comfortable with simply reading about the parliamentary fisticuffs a day late, it is pure, enchanting, theater. The type of stuff that should make Guyanese laff through their tears, and rise above their fears.
Let me be straight, help fellow Guyanese manage their expectations. Those looking for the piercing wit of the House of Commons, the delicately savaging putdown, of British parliamentarians in vibrating crescendo, need not look nor read anymore. Guyanese politicians don’t know how, are a set of bland, stodgy duffers. There is no depth, no humor, in them. When is the last time that anyone has seen the president, vice president, attorney general, and the man guarding the bank vault crack a smile? All disagreements end there.
I can confirm that the budget debates are the best to beat the blues, fight that feeling of sluggishness, scale the roadblocks that life throws at locals. There is something for everyone. Slash, trash, and bash entertainment for the little ones. Verbal violence to make the elderly forget their own troubles. And, of course, the usual lengthy history lessons that originates in Thursday afternoon tirades and predawn diatribes, which are inseparable from the deliveries of the Vice President (president behind the curtains) and His Excellency, the paper president. In the rare event that there are Guyanese who are having difficulty figuring out what the history lessons are about, let me do the honours.
They are about what the PNC didn’t do (from the PPP corner); and what the PPP failed to do (with the PNC returning the favor in a two-fisted manner). These are not the tranquility of sparring sessions; they are eyeball-to-eyeball battles in the middle of the three-cornered circus ring that is the National Assembly. Whose national assembly and an assembly of what, are the questions that challenge. It cannot be of civilized Guyanese. Nor can it be of men and women dedicated to dealing in what offers some sliver of intelligence, some aspect of benefits, for hard-pressed Guyanese laboring with hard times, when the world tells them they are among the richest this side of heaven.
I have encountered rich dummies and poor little rich fools. But Guyanese surpass those sorry bunches of humanity. So as not to insult any in the local fraternity and sorority, it would be better if no questions are asked about which direction the surpassing is heading.
If all of the colorless, lukewarm, anemic clashes are supposed to represent parliamentary budget debates, I recommend to the Clerk of Proceedings, Mr. Sherlock Isaacs, that he consider cease beaming the trash talking (bloviating), the showboating (preening), and the hotdogging (flouncing) to the public. If it’s on Facebook, there should be a hefty penalty taken out from Guyanese oil money. Stone the crows if it is on TV, for that would mean that the Guyana Broadcasting Authority fell down on the job. Or was so overcome with despair that its members are rolling around on the ground.
I am still to come across a word of sagacity, something approaching budget profoundness. Try these dimwitted ministerial (including shadow ones) stabs in the dark, while hoping to collide with something inspiring. Sell more oil to stave off falling prices. Is that the work of a scholar or a nobody pretending to be somebody? What I detect is anything to keep the Oil Fund floating and the withdrawals coming, while blasting away with the record budget carnivals.
Plus keeping the puerile and sterile budget debates going. Try this other one: PPP Govt backtracking on a Petroleum Commission because it has its hands full of oil money. The PPP, more specifically Dr. Jagdeo, is the Petroleum Commission. So why all the hullabaloo from the opposition? Nobody has made it official, but that’s accepted reality? He is independent, he is credible, and he is the foremost Guyanese oil expert. What more is desired? Why fix what is not broken, what represents unmatched oil cleverness, crude oil astuteness? C’mon, folks, time to get sober.
The icing on the budget cake was that lash from the government side that the PNC hasn’t committed to renegotiation of the Exxon contract. This is beyond unbelievable. The PPP Government doesn’t want to hear the first letter in the word renegotiation, but smacks the opposition for doing what it is doing. This cannot be a country; it is a catastrophe. Oh, and those can’t be budget debates. Somebody must be getting a rebate for making complete fools of themselves. Still, Guyanese get a break from their daily grind, nonstop battering.
