If there’s a group of Guyanese that’s happy with Dr. Ashni Singh’s 2026 Budget, it’s the One Guyana crowd. Dr. Ali has lovingly cared it. Those Guyanese smiling from ear-to-ear, hurrying to the bank. Exclude me; I’m trying to stay afloat. Stepping forward, I boldly assert that the 2026 Budget has many built-in biases, can be described as bigoted. In homage to political correctness, I avoid the R-word that Guyanese have used in the last seven decades. Is how come, yuh geh suh (the R-word completes the sentence).
I could have saved Dr. Singh over six hours of his precious time wasted on delivering that $1.558 trillion budget. The PPP have budgets in the last two years and now this one that pole-vaults a trillion dollars, but outliers and outsiders, the ostracized, in Guyana get what is tantamount to a two- and three-dollar bill. Sure, sure! There are people who look like me, who get the sharp, savaging end of the budget stick. Call that the sweep of the dragnet, what is called inescapable collateral damage.
So, who gets the billions, in the tens and hundreds? Now the trouble starts, and the slings and arrows brandished. I say agriculture. And, who Guyanese ladies and gentlemen are the main presences in agriculture? One Guyana! Hail PPP Govt’s schemers and tilters, who steer the billions to their people. The One Guyana people. They look like me, but complexion fools. A question: what is agriculture and farmers and the billions doled out to them, if not a huge three-card ring? There are billions for fertilizers, billions for roads, probably more billions for crop insurance, but callaloo and cucumbers, string beans and long beans and butter beans, and sweet potato and soursop keep going up like Elon Musk’s spaceships or satellites. What’s the con game being played there? Poor people pay hard prices due to budget neglect, then pay another price when visiting markets, facing vendors. It was said that Maduro was a badman to be feared. Who are the real outlaws here, the domestic financial hitmen, who should be feared for their plots, their economic perversions?
More for schools budgeted, which means tens of billions more. More roads and bridges and somebody must build those grand testimonies to PPP Govt’s public works preparations for the 25th century, what camouflage plenty skullduggeries. Leave corruption today. Study contractors. And who are overwhelmingly the successful bidders, just like the rice and heavy-duty fruits and veggies man? I take the easy, tactful way. They mostly look like me, except that I don’t count, belong. Don’t want to be, don’t know how to be. Hello, Dr. J, remember me, now that paradise is presided over.
Suppliers for billions budgeted for the health sector have mainly been one kind of people. Oh, participants have to have capital, connections, and cunning re how procurement works. It’s a two-way street. If all these groups that benefit enormously from record budgets are assembled, onlookers would think of Russia or China. Homogenous. The great majority (by far) are from one bright and beautiful segment of Guyana’s demographic. Incidentally, Mr. Census, ‘Dr. Cruz Control’, an edifying word on demographic percentages would help.
For emphasis, the budget is heavily skewed to favor the rich, the big fish. Said before. But the rich, big fish are again taken care of this year, so that face of One Guyana prospers and prospers. A bigger budget means that the big fish get a bigger slice. Whether scales or gills are looked at, or head or tail studied, the resulting color-coding is the same. It is about who’s in, and who’s out.
Indeed, old people money and young children money reach everybody. But that’s the leftover money, the drinking money, that is given to combat charges of bias, prejudice, partisanship, and bigotry. The pundits and Guyana intelligentsia are urge to do the addition. If they can get to 10% of the $1.558 trillion ($155 billion) budgeted for cash in hand, including poor relief fares, they did well. Then total the eyepopping hundreds of billions for PPP Govt cronies, via different schemes, and determine how much of that remaining 90% was smartly parceled, channeled. The mixed masses struggle to clasp 10% of another record budget to buy food, hail a minibus, collect a Tylenol, honor bills, and Dr. Singh insists that they won the lottery. Meanwhile, the select few drools in anticipation of getting their grubby paws on their fat percentage of the budget. They look mostly like me. But they are not me. I see calculated built-in bias, even brazen bigotry in this budget.
