Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 24, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
The 2012 budget resulted in a tempestuous confrontation between the combined opposition and the Government. Unless Mr. Ramotar is dishonest or psychologically irrational, then he must know that the fight was about one thing only – the opposition did not support all the contents of the budget. This was a year ago.
What was Mr. Ramotar doing the past twelve months to observe on Friday last that the government “remains prepared” to talk with the opposition?
If one wants to be harsh with Mr. Ramotar one can say this is utterly foolish. The budget is to be tabled tomorrow. It meant that on Friday when Mr. Ramotar made his observation, the budget was a done deal. What can the opposition parties do at this stage to get the Finance Ministry to include their requests? Which citizen can be so stupid to think for one year, it was impossible to arrange an intensive discussion between the two sides? Now that the budget is complete, Mr. Ramotar hopes there can be a meeting of minds.
Now if you think that Mr. Ramotar was just politicking, here is the frightening part. It is at the heart of the tragedy of Guyana. Mr. Ramotar on Friday went on to say that the budget is a good one and he hopes the opposition supports it. It is good for whom? It is good in the eyes of whom? The PPP of course. This is where the minds of PPP leaders converge in a phantasmagoria of epistemological madness.
The PPP neatly separates Guyana into good and evil. The good people are the PPP. The bad people are those who oppose the PPP. If the PPP imprisons a citizen he had a right to be jailed; he was doing bad things. If the PPP dismisses a public sector worker, he had a right to lose his job; he was not a good person. If the PPP criticizes a newspaper, it is not worth to be published because it prints terrible things. No greater example of this philosophical insanity is the example of Roger Luncheon announcing that the “hostile media is misrepresenting the radio licence issue.”
The licence allocation has been so sickening in the way it has been done that no decent person will accept it. But Luncheon says the “hostile media” is into mischief. One has to understand that Luncheon’s conceptualization of politics will lead him and other PPP leaders to see misrepresentation on the part of those who disagree with the action, plans and policies of the Government.
This is exactly the road that President Ramotar will travel from Monday when citizens and national stakeholders disagree that the 2013 budget is not a good one.
President Ramotar will behave exactly the way Luncheon did on the radio licence depravity. He will criticize you if you criticize his good budget, because you should not find fault with his good budget. This columnist will judge for himself if it is a good budget based on what it contains for the poor and powerless.
One definite expectation about the 2013 budget has to be the acceptance by the budget drafters of one of the most morally righteous requests by the Private Sector Commission (PSC) to the Minister of Finance – the abolition of property tax for certain people. One of those certain people is me. I pay property tax. Don’t be misled. Property tax is not on your property. It is on your assets, meaning house, bankbook, car etc.
Here is a description of one of the horrible things in life. I worked for twenty-six years in the public sector, my wife for twenty-three. After we collected our salaries that were taxed, we put it in the bank. With that money we bought a house and a car. That taxed money that we put in the bank, that house and that car, we have to pay another set of taxes on them called property tax. This is in addition to paying rates and taxes to the City Council every year on the house we own.
But brace yourself for the nightmare of property tax. I have reached retirement age so I get a pension from UG and the NIS which goes into my account at the bank. Since I have to pay property tax on that account, it means even my pension is taxed. Not even the world’s combined geniuses could defend such naked inequality.
The abolition of this Frankenstein tax in the 2013 budget was requested by the PSC. But if it remains, President Ramotar will still maintain his budget is a good one. What is frightening about the PPP is its nice, neat definition of who is bad and who is good. And always, the PPP people are the good humans. Those who condemn the PPP for its misbehaviour are not nice humans.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
Apr 24, 2024
Round 2 GFF Women’s League Division One Kaieteur Sports – The Guyana Police Force FC on Saturday last demolished Pakuri Jaguars FC with a 17 – 0 goal blitz at the Guyana Football...Kaieteur News – Just recently, the PPC determined that it does not have the authority to vitiate a contract which was... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders Waterfalls Magazine – On April 10, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States... more
Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.
Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]