The first thing to be said about the crashed de­bate on the 2026 Bud­get in the Par­lia­ment over the week­end, is that it col­lapsed un­der the weight of parochial par­ty pol­i­tics and game-play­ing be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion; and it hap­pened with­out any con­cern by the two for the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The po­lit­i­cal bac­cha­nal start­ed when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed a cou­ple of gen­er­alised views out­side the Par­lia­ment to the me­dia af­ter the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. If the na­tion thought that was a pre­lim­i­nary state­ment be­fore her con­tri­bu­tion to the ac­tu­al de­bate, how­ev­er, it was de­ceived, as the PM did not re­turn to the Par­lia­men­tary de­bate. 

The crash of the de­bate, in fact, seemed a well-chore­o­graphed process which came to its full­ness when the Gov­ern­ment used its 26-13-2 ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment to wear out Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs. 

Ac­cord­ing to PNM Chief Whip, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, the Gov­ern­ment used its mem­bers with­out port­fo­lio to en­gage the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers in their con­tri­bu­tions. This meant that the Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters with heavy port­fo­lios spoke with­out re­spons­es from the Op­po­si­tion, the PNM by then hav­ing no more MPs to speak.

In turn, the PNM, as the Op­po­si­tion, re­fused to en­gage in de­bate with the back­benchers, hav­ing al­ready had sev­en of its mem­bers op­pose the Gov­ern­ment.  

The House Speak­er then used the op­tion of call­ing on Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo to wind up, and he did so with what has be­come a trade­mark dra­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tion, es­sen­tial­ly heap­ing scorn on the Op­po­si­tion. 

The truth is that it is the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that lost in this sce­nario, as there ul­ti­mate­ly was no pre­sen­ta­tion and sol­id de­bate on crit­i­cal mat­ters pre­sent­ed in the Bud­get. The two ma­jor par­ties need to be re­mind­ed that it is through the de­bate process that the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can make sen­si­ble judge­ments on what is con­tained in the fi­nan­cial state­ment.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this sce­nario has played out be­cause the two ma­jor par­ties went in­to the ses­sions to ar­gue over po­lit­i­cal con­flicts, rather than on con­struc­tive views on the na­tion­al bud­get. 

The lead­ers of these two par­ties, which have steadi­ly been vot­ed in­to of­fice ex­cept for one elec­toral term since 1956, have thus once again demon­strat­ed gross ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to­wards the cit­i­zens who vot­ed them in­to of­fice to take care of the coun­try's busi­ness. 

What, there­fore, hap­pened with this Bud­get “de­bate” was an in­glo­ri­ous cha­rade which left the pop­u­la­tion no bet­ter in­formed than be­fore. And it must be said that it was led by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who com­plete­ly ne­glect­ed her Par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to lead her Gov­ern­ment for­ward in pro­gres­sive de­bate on the ex­pen­di­ture and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes planned for the coun­try over the next fis­cal year.

Such be­hav­iour is per­plex­ing, giv­en that Per­sad-Bisses­sar is in her sec­ond term in of­fice and her new Gov­ern­ment should have been ea­ger to ex­plain how it will run the coun­try over the next five years. Need­less to say, the coun­try de­serves much bet­ter than what has tran­spired in this mat­ter.