The Budget Debate Shoe on other foot now

WE LEFT OFF last week by situating our 2026 Budget in its proper context, locally and geopolitically. It was important to note that not only is the 2026 Budget partially a product of a new and vastly inexperienced Cabinet but because of the timing of elections, the “consequences” again, it turned out to be a hybrid of what had been largely prepared by the past administration, perhaps arrogantly expecting to get yet another term from the electorate and the demands of the newly elected Parliamentarians and supporters.

This is the first Parliament in this century not dominated by current Opposition Leader Dr Ralph Gonsalves and his ULP administration. But the swing has not only been on one side for if we go back to the 1984 election, we have also had mainly one-sided governments. It became as ridiculous as the sweep in the 1989 election when we elected a Parliament without an Opposition and frustrated all attempts to forge some sort of arrangement which would satisfy constitutional requirements for some sort of “Opposition” arrangement in Parliament.

It was not just in Parliament that there was a weakening of Opposition representation. As far back as 1973 when what was called the “Junta” government of the day found itself severely challenged by the then existing constitutional arrangements, at that time at local government level, the governmental response was to suspend local government elections, a “suspension” that is now all of 53 years old. Starting with that slide at local government level (Town Boards and Village Councils) it didn’t take long to slide further. We had a one-sided parliament 1989-1994, and now have a single elected Member of Parliament on the Opposition side.Yes, it’s true, “when you slip you slide”.

It becomes easy to accommodate such deterioration. Thus, during the seventies and eighties, we grew accustomed to high-handed undemocratic rule. This led those then in office to try and test the level of our democratic patience. Older folk will remember the bitter lessons of the early eighties when an autocratic and rabid faction within the then governing Labour Party went so far as to table legislation (notoriously referred to as “the Bills”) in Parliament to deprive citizens of our hard-won democratic rights. It took a massive mobilisation of tens of thousands of working people to stop them.

That mobilisation was made possible because organisation and mobilisation of working people was a regular habit. Even schools had Student Councils, democratically elected if you please; community groups and village councils had their own regular plebiscites and unlike today, political parties organized public meetings. Today, you could be President of an organisation, “for life” without formidable challenge. Such is the level of our democracy.

It has led to the attainment of the nation’s highest office by someone in the right place at the right time, when it is difficult to comprehend what he stands for.