Budgets shape people, relationships and lives

 

Secondly, it fails as an instrument of parliamentary democracy to balance the people’s ownership of the power and authority of Constitutional institutions, by or through representatives, against control by several political parties of the power of the Cabinet. People-power goes beyond voting every five years, to discussing and acting on how the power of the Cabinet can frustrate the will of we the people. Ownership is not possession. We the people own the State, yet Parliament is in possession of law-making, Cabinet holds the power to execute the will of Parliament, and the Judiciary holds the authority to interpret the law. Can any of our stewards in the three arms of government deceive us the owners? Of course yes, the most careful deceits relative to budgets and Parliament occur when the executive comes to power on the backs of promises to operate at a higher standard than predecessors, and on the back of anonymous investors in campaign funding who will seek their pound of flesh. Winners and losers at elections cannot avoid paying back the campaign financiers even at the risk of comfortably seeking to follow the same track made decades ago for gouti to run. They can lower standards forged in the offer and acceptance of the political campaign while breaking promises to the people.

 

How do we protect our Government’s budget when such situations arise? We can search for that careful thief who can steal the budgetary controls which make our democracy what it is meant to be. We are searching for the thief who steals the means to override the controls. One such means involves the periodic maintenance of the Standing Orders of the Parliament, our formal voice in all this governing. We change these Orders which have not been changed in more than 50 years. We also pass legislation for the Republic to fully fund future election campaigns of the nation’s political parties. The last 12 years of elections will certainly have cost hundreds of millions of dollars each to the PNM and the UNC, definitely less to the COP. From what sources did all this money come? The very song the State has sung to parents to have them find out about significant money and valuables their children bring into homes, is the same procedure this budget should contain to make political parties now accountable for 12 years’ campaign funds and, future funds when we pay them from our treasury. At the heart of the steal are lax public procurement policies and procedures.

 

Simon Clement

D’Abadie