Barrow lambastes government?s “mumbo jumbo” budget
In comparison to last year’s budget, debated only a rock’s throw from a tense confrontation at the foot of Independence Hill, today’s 2006 version was predictably anticlimatic. The speeches from both sides of the aisle seemed more perfunctory than impassioned, perhaps out of political weariness following the municipal elections or a recognition that with little room to maneuver, the government had finally decided to face the consequences of its past financial mismanagement. Whatever the reason, even Opposition Leader Dean Barrow took a relaxed approah, his usual extemporaneous barbs blunted by a prepared scrypt … although it still might be a good idea for viewers to haul out their dictionaries.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
?Madam Speaker, over the past eight years we have witnessed budget presentations that were little more than a sham, a mask the government held before its face in an effort to avoid recognition by the eye of truth and retribution. Well, last year proved conclusively that the jig is up. That the crowing rhetoric and the false figures could no longer conceal the abysmal reality of what Belize had become, a completely bifurcated nation. One in which the general misery that had overtaken the many was forced to co-exist in smouldering resentment with the official corruption that had produced such an obscene advantage to the few. The result was the tectonic shock of the rioting on Independence Hill, an unprecedented convulsion that could hardly be made any less so by the Prime Minister?s weak description of it last week as merely a vociferous demonstration. After January of 2005 then, the country had a right to expect a difference this year, a final end to the slight of hand and the smoke and mirrors that had come to characterise the government?s annual ritual. And if truth be told Madam Speaker, we did see a very much chastened Prime Minister and hear a presentation trimmed of a great deal of the past excesses. But how could it have been otherwise Madam Speaker, after all, last year?s drama of the streets was replaced by this year?s drama of the ballot. The results needless to remind were even more devastating to the Prime Minister?s accustomed style.?
?Madam Speaker, we reject the mumbo jumbo about doing it in order to conform to new accounting standards. It is done rather?the evidence shows?so that government can engage in the abomination of making this blatantly false claim that it has reduced the overall deficit to eighty-nine million dollars or only thee point nine percent of G.D.P. To say that the overall deficit is only eighty-nine million dollars, when in addition we have to find money to make debt repayments of three hundred and six point seven million dollars and another twenty-nine point eight million dollars for the purchase of equity is dishonest in the extreme. It seeks to hide the frightening reality that we had to borrow an additional four hundred and twenty-five point five million dollars for 05-06. To put this into its proper context Madam Speaker, what we borrowed in this one year alone is equivalent of the country?s entire debt in 1998; all that it had borrowed in its complete lifespan since independence.?
?It is the corruption issue that has most caused this government to come undone. While the Prime Minister ever refuses to publicly acknowledge this, his speech contain more than a hint that he is only too aware of the truth. It is those endless schemes for the enrichment of the group, bound up with what he himself now calls those grandiose projects of the past eight years that have so shattered public confidence. It is they that have drained this government of every last vestige of legitimacy, every last iota of credibility, every last ounce of support. Look around Mr. Prime Minister, there is no way you can turn, no one you can trust. Even in your own ranks, things have fallen apart. There is no centre which can hold. Ministers are at each other and at you. And that unmistakable smell of carrion flesh that hang so heavily in the air, guess from whose rotting political carcass it comes.?
