Richard?Lord

Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah says a lack of con­fi­dence in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on mea­sures con­tained the $58.4 bil­lion na­tion­al bud­get pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. Ab­du­lah said yes­ter­day Howai "cor­rect­ly chose not to go the route of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures." Ab­du­lah, a for­mer gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, said: "This Gov­ern­ment has failed to of­fer the coun­try a na­tion­al vi­sion in which all cit­i­zens can share and around which the en­tire coun­try can be ral­lied to achieve."

He said what was need­ed was "some bold ini­tia­tives that can mo­bilise the re­sources that are now ei­ther idle or un­der-utilised and in­volve cit­i­zens in a na­tion­al ef­fort. The mea­sures an­nounced will not achieve this." Ab­du­lah said:?"The pro­vi­sion of fis­cal in­cen­tives does not by and of it­self mo­bilise idle re­sources, nor does our pri­vate sec­tor re­spond to such in­cen­tives with the lev­el of in­vest­ment nec­es­sary to stim­u­late the econ­o­my in mo­ments of down­turn."

He said his labour-based par­ty want­ed to see es­tab­lished a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment fund, "man­aged in a trans­par­ent man­ner by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il so­ci­ety and the gov­ern­ment and used for the kind of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects that would con­struct/re­con­struct ad­e­quate drainage, com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties, etc, start­ing with at-risk com­mu­ni­ties. Such projects would be con­struct­ed in­volv­ing hu­man re­sources from the com­mu­ni­ties and on the ba­sis of pri­or­i­ties set by the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty."