Renu­ka Singh

“What have you done with all those bil­lions of dol­lars? What do you have to show for ex­pen­di­tures of this mas­sive amount of mon­ey?” asked Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she joined the de­bate fol­low­ing the diliv­ery of the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

She laughed as she re­count­ed that Im­bert boast­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had not bor­rowed any mon­ey in the past five months.

“You know you’ve hit rock bot­tom when the on­ly ac­com­plish­ment this Gov­ern­ment can tell us about is that they did not bor­row for the first five months of the year. Big ac­com­plish­ment, shout­ing and boast­ing and cel­e­brat­ing,” she said.

“All the things that the min­is­ter is boast­ing and crow­ing about has noth­ing to do with lead­er­ship.”

She said the good news brought by Im­bert was ac­tu­al­ly based on the high­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices.

“So the ques­tion is this, af­ter the war in Ukraine, af­ter these prices go back to nor­mal, what would you do? What will you do?” she asked.

“You have shown no projects, no pol­i­cy, no strat­e­gy, no plan to grow the econ­o­my but you boast­ing about high en­er­gy prices.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said once the war in Ukraine is over, the Gov­ern­ment will go back to “raid­ing” the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

“Would you go back to bor­row­ing, be­cause you have no new projects, no rev­enue streams, no in­vest­ments?” she asked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was “very dif­fi­cult” to be­lieve all the good news Im­bert had list­ed.

“I am not say­ing he is dis­hon­est but I am say­ing that he is over-ex­u­ber­ant and very op­ti­mistic and seeks to in­fuse that in­to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion but I am not con­vinced,” she said.

She said she was al­so not con­vinced that Im­bert even be­lieved him­self.

“Very low tone, very low key,” she said.

She said while Im­bert list­ed the bil­lion-dol­lar VAT pay­ment, the IMF re­port said that over $7 bil­lion was owed to peo­ple.

“That VAT pay­ment goes back­wards, it is not ac­crued over this pe­ri­od,” she said.

She said that the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing VAT pay­ment as a loan and giv­ing it back to peo­ple years lat­er, and promised to re­vamp this when she took over the Gov­ern­ment.

One of the is­sues that plagued yes­ter­day’s de­bate was the de­ter­mi­na­tion of speak­ing times, which was ini­tial­ly set for 45 min­utes for re­but­tal but was changed last-minute to 66 min­utes. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Gov­ern­ment that if they thought they were “blind­sid­ing” her, they were wrong.

“And lis­ten, you (Im­bert) talked for 67 min­utes, I could do that and more so don’t think you blind­sided me, don’t think you blind­sided us by telling us that we would on­ly have 45 min­utes and come to­day and say ‘un­lim­it­ed time’. I am not afraid, I could out talk you any day, any time,” she said to desk-thump­ing sup­port.

She read out the de­tails of a What­sApp ex­change be­tween Op­po­si­tion chief whip David Lee and the leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness about the speak­ing times, in which the Op­po­si­tion was told that the 45 min­utes, which was cus­tom­ary, would be in place for the first re­spon­der and 30 min­utes for oth­er speak­ers.

“You mis­led this House and you mis­led us,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there was a “bi­as­ness” in the House and did not blame the Speak­er but said the PNM at­tempt­ed to run the House as if it was Bal­isi­er House.

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