Opposition to stay away from Parliamentary debate on budget measures

The APNU+AFC Coalition has made public its intention to stay away from the National Assembly as it sits to debate and pass several Bills to give effect to measures in the 2020 National Budget.

A statement from the Leader of the Opposition Office just hours before the scheduled sitting on Tuesday said “the APNU+AFC will not be part of another attempt by the PPP to deceive the Guyanese people.”

Although it voted with the PPP government to pass the budget, the APNU+AFC remains opposed to several aspects of the 2020 fiscal plan for which it had oversight for a total of seven months.

The statement by Joseph Harmon noted that the coalition was still not in full support of the budget and will not be debating any Bills that would give effect to the measures.

“In the circumstance, we believe that the interest of the Guyanese people will not be served by our attendance and further debate on measures in this anti-working class budget today,” the statement added.

All MPS on both sides of the House met daily over the past two weeks to debate the budget proposals and considered estimates of expenditure.

It was during this process that the Coalition charged that the budget ignores the poor Guyanese and will make life more difficult.

“As we have maintained from the inception, the budget is defective, divisive and deceptive… the budget has been passed despite several interventions APNU+AFC made about breaches of the law and the biased allocation of the financial resources of this country,” the statement added.

The APNU+AFC feels that the Bills before the House and up for debate today belatedly seek to have discussions on the matters which we already debated, but extract those measures which seek to show a soft side of what it described as an extremely harsh budget for the ordinary Guyanese man and woman.