Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day says the 2009/10 na­tion­al bud­get of­fers no hope for the peo­ple of T&T. Pan­day said so dur­ing his three-hour bud­get re­sponse in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

It was the first time he re­spond­ed to a bud­get in three years be­cause in the first in­stance his Cou­va North seat was de­clared va­cant be­cause of a court rul­ing and on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion he was sus­pend­ed be­cause of his fail­ure to heed a rul­ing by Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan about the use of a lap­top com­put­er dur­ing the par­tic­u­lar sit­ting. Pan­day warned that af­ter the $44.3 bil­lion bud­get was ap­proved the Cen­tral Bank would re­veal the true state of the na­tion­al econ­o­my. "The da­ta which the Cen­tral Bank will pro­duce con­ve­nient­ly af­ter this Bud­get de­bate is fin­ished will show that T&T is in fact, un­de­ni­ably in a re­ces­sion." He said the coun­try's econ­o­my was in trou­ble be­cause of the reck­less spend­ing and mis­man­age­ment of the econ­o­my by the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion over the past sev­er­al years. "The on­ly plan the gov­ern­ment has is to spend, spend and spend," Pan­day added. He said the bud­get "of­fered noth­ing to spark a resur­gence in any sec­tor of the econ­o­my." He said the Op­po­si­tion UNC had no con­fi­dence in the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance's pro­jec­tion of pos­i­tive growth in 2010.

"We see noth­ing to en­gen­der pub­lic con­fi­dence and to stim­u­late con­sumer spend­ing. We see noth­ing here to stem the fall in busi­ness con­fi­dence." He said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was en­gag­ing in a course of ac­tion that would burn a huge hole in the coun­try's for­eign re­serves in fis­cal 2010. He then warned of "a very re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of a se­ri­ous prob­lem." Pan­day al­so warned of an im­mi­nent de­val­u­a­tion. "The Gov­ern­ment's reck­less ex­pen­di­ture pat­tern is push­ing this coun­try to­wards a pos­si­ble de­val­u­a­tion in the short term.". To this PM Man­ning re­spond­ed telling Pan­day: "That was very ir­re­spon­si­ble." Pan­day said Tesheira should make a firm state­ment on that mat­ter dur­ing the de­bate. He not­ed that the Re­view of the Econ­o­my, which was pre­sent­ed with oth­er bud­get doc­u­ments was not pre­sent­ed this year. He said that was con­tempt of Par­lia­ment. Dur­ing his re­sponse, Pan­day was heard cough­ing on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, prompt­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to ad­vise him to "stay out of the dew at nights", to which Pan­day re­spond­ed: "If we had a good health sys­tem here I would not be like this." Pan­day was very crit­i­cal of Tesheira say­ing the bud­get was on­ly about "spend­ing, spend­ing and spend­ing." Pan­day said cit­i­zens still slept on the floor in pub­lic hos­pi­tals, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was ir­rel­e­vant to the na­tion's needs, the agri­cul­ture sec­tor re­mained un­de­vel­oped, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor was on the de­cline, the min­i­mum wage is un­ac­cept­ably low.

"The on­ly thing grow­ing in this coun­try is crime," Pan­day said. He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of en­gag­ing in pub­lic re­la­tions gim­mick­ry and fail­ing to keep promis­es to cit­i­zens. Pan­day made a di­rect call to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to re­move World record hold­er and for­mer West In­dies crick­et cap­tain, Bri­an Lara from the sta­di­um be­ing con­struct­ed in Tarou­ba, south Trinidad. "Mr PM for the sake of Bri­an Lara, re­move his name from that," he added to sus­tained desk-thump­ing. Pan­day said the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to say last week when the project would be com­plet­ed and at what cost. "And you call that pru­dent man­age­ment. I won­der what our zeal­ous Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has done to en­sure trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and val­ue for mon­ey on that project," Pan­day added.

?Traf­fic of­fences

Deal­ing with the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in penal­ties for road traf­fic of­fences to re­duce the car­nage on the na­tion's roads, Pan­day said it would not work. He sug­gest­ed in­stead that po­lice of­fi­cers be equipped with speed guns. "If the Min­is­ter was re­al­ly se­ri­ous about ad­dress­ing the car­nage on the roads she would have im­ple­ment­ed the Breathal­yser. These fines are pure and sim­ple des­per­ate at­tempts to prop up gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture." He said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to "fill a void caused by squan­der ma­nia." Deal­ing with tints on ve­hi­cles, Pan­day said em­ploy­ees of the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion were be­ing put at a dis­ad­van­tage in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties as a spe­cial piece of equip­ment is re­quired to prove that a tint was il­le­gal. He said the prop­er­ty tax was "in­fa­mous and no­to­ri­ous." He said the ini­tia­tive to in­crease ex­ist­ing prop­er­ty tax­es was "a des­per­ate at­tempt to raise funds to sat­is­fy the gov­ern­ment's spend­ing craze." He said the Prop­er­ty Tax was a "re­gres­sive" mea­sure and sug­gest­ed that the mea­sure should be with­drawn.