Georgetown: The Alliance for Change (AFC) says the party strongly rejects the statement coming from His Excellency President Ramotar referring to "act of terrorism".
“It is a dangerous statement and a threat to all law-abiding citizens. It is grounded in shallow political rhetoric that is designed to terrorise the national elected Parliamentarian into submission. President Ramotar after all has suggested that the 33 elected opposition MPs are domestic terrorists and we call for condemnation of this,” the Party noted.
The AFC noted that parliamentarians are elected to enable and give life to the Constitution and thus are protected by the rule of law in doing their work on the people's behalf. “At no time are parliamentarians engaged in acts of terrorism in the chambers of the National Assembly. We call on President Ramotar to respect and embrace the founding principles of our God given, unalienable fundamental rights to Life, Liberty and most importantly the freedom of expression. Rather than to use his bully pulpit at the Office of the President to trash these core values of the Guyanese people with his wild claim that the opposition defeat of the Amaila issues as an "act of terrorism" against development in Guyana.”
The AFC stressed that President Ramotar comments do not respect the will of the Guyanese people. “We have a duty to the Guyanese people to ensure accountability for the public purse and to ensure that the public debt dynamics remain sustainable. We in the AFC have stated publically that we want a professional opinion from the IDB before we sign on to any increase in the debt ceiling and feel justified in taking this stance.” The AFC underscored “We are not interested in another Skeldon Sugar Factory and thus we have a duty to the children of Guyana, who in time will be saddled with the responsibility of paying back any future debt. Therefore we will only support projects that will maximize their contribution to economic growth and poverty reduction. “
The party further stated that the AFC intend to monitor closely the risks related to the contingent liability exposure associated with the Amaila Hydro Project to not compromise the medium-term debt management strategy. We recognize that only the IDB has the capacity to investigate and signal financial approval and we prefer to wait on this before moving forward on these issues.
The AFC is committed to motivating the PPP/C Government to taking Guyana towards a reduction in the primary fiscal deficit, as one of the many measures to help contain the public debt-to-GDP ratio towards a level of 60 percent or below. We in the AFC are not ready to go back to the un-creditworthy days of the PNC ever again and thus this runaway appetite of the PPP for NEW DEBT has to be interrogated and questioned. That is why we ask the PPP/C Government to act more responsibly and await the due diligence report from the IDB and if the report is favourable from our perspective, we are prepared to support all the rational conditionalities associated with the Amaila Hydro project.
Therefore, “we think President Ramotar statements are unjust and unfair and contains some dangerous characterization which compromises the independence of the Legislative Branch of the Government and we call for the immediate withdrawal of this intemperate comment. The AFC hopes that in the future greater emphasis can be placed on developing greater levels of negotiation and compromise in the interest of all Guyana.”
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