Prime Minister Dean Barrow and Opposition Leader John Briceno will debate each other in just over a week, but tonight we’ll have a preview of some of what they’ll have to say about each other and in defence of their own party’s positions. We spoke to both leaders yesterday and asked what will be their angles of attack and their lines of defence. And the always adversarial Jules Vasquez got into the mix himself.
Jules Vasquez,
In terms of fulfilling the manifesto promises, there is no job program, 5,000 were promised, for housing only $1 million has been budgeted for housing and you promised 1,000 houses, there is no exemption for PAYE. You have to agree that in terms of fulfilling the manifesto promises, it is not one-fifth of the way.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“I don’t think anybody expected the manifesto promises to be fulfilled in the first year or to come in close to being fulfilled in the first year. I think that people will judge this budget on its own merits. We have spelled out quite clearly where we will get the follow-up where it all to in fact move closer, as we proceed, to the fulfilment of, I am sure, what will be something like 90% of our manifesto objectives.”
Hon. John Briceno, Leader of the Opposition
“Most of what you are seeing there are projects or works that the previous government has been doing. Look at something that is close to me, the sugar roads. The four point something million dollars that he has in his budget, that was negotiated by the previous government with the EU funding. The DFC, he has made so much about the new funding for the DFC but that was work that was already being done by the previous government with both CDB and IDB and the list can go on.”
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“A project becomes a project when it is funded. Those projects are projects that we have secured the funding and there are projects that it doesn’t take any particular ingenuity to come up with it. These are obvious projects in terms of the national agenda so you can’t prick this balloon, you can’t deflate this particular balloon.”
Hon. John Briceno,
“It is a hollow budget. I think the budget is still at ‘imagine the possibilities’ because it is certainly not being spelt out in the budget.”
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“I don’t care how you look at it, any way you slice it, this in the circumstances, in the global circumstances, local circumstances, this is a good budget of which I and the UDP can be extremely proud.”
Barrow also flatly rejected the suggestion that revitalizing the DFC was initiated by the Musa administration. We checked last year’s budget presentation and it refers directly to CDB funding for a study to examine the possibilities for a new development funding mechanism.
