OPINION: Seminal Speech by Anil Nandlall (Part I)

Last Updated on Sunday, 28 January 2024, 9:06 by Denis Chabrol

by Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus

As you know, the People’s Progressive Party has a deep bench with the gift of oratory. To no one’s surprise, therefore, PPP cabinet members and MPs, one after the other, rose to the occasion and delivered informed and fact-filled presentations on Budget 2024. I have already written about the performance of the indefatigable Dr Ashni Singh, Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, and the Public Service. Dr Ashni Kumar Singh has become an oratory legend in his own time, and I feel certain no one from the other side of the aisle would doubt this.

My focus today is the speech by Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall (SC). It was a seminal speech because of its structural organization, the order in which empirical information was presented, the tactical deployment of signs, and the relentless systematicity with which Nandlall’s claims and propositions were articulated.

You may recall that speaker after speaker from the APNU-AFC said they saw nothing in the budget worthy of note, and in their jaundiced view, nothing for ordinary people. Nandlall pounced on this by using the comparative method. Unlike the usual techniques in comparative politics, however, Nandlall embarked on his assessment by bending the science of comparative analysis into an artform constructed around a plethora of (semiotic) signs.

He first listed some projects of the PPP, and what Budget 2024 will do. His list includes the following –

The new Demerara Harbor Bridge being built; Gas-to-Shore project under construction; Cheddi Jagan International Airport under construction; Albion Sugar Estate rebuilt; 12 hospitals under construction; Dozens of schools under construction; The technical institute under construction at Port Mourant; Dozens of housing schemes under construction; Several court houses under construction; Water treatment plants under construction; Dozens of highways and community roads under construction; Multi-million-dollar complexes to accommodate police officers; Buildings to house the elderly and victims of domestic violence; Several stadiums (stadia) under construction; Hundreds of sports grounds under rehabilitation; Thousands of acres of land under cultivation; 21,000 students enrolled or have graduated through GOAL scholarships; 205,000 students who will receive $45,000 in cash grants; 76,000 who will benefit from a $3,000 pension increase; 205,000 students and 76,000 who will benefits from subsides for eye tests and spectacles; $40 billion in fuel subsidies; $6 billion in freight subsidies; Thousands who will benefit from the $100,000 income tax threshold; Hundreds of small businesses that will benefit from a special 3% interest rate; 20,000 women and unemployed who benefit from the $40,000 monthly part time-jobs program, and Hundreds of persons who receive the $60,000 in subsidies for dialysis treatment.

Nandlall proceeded to ‘compare’ the record of the APNU-AFC when they were in office, 2015-2020. Here is the AG’s list – “Durban Park, which right now accommodates 12 donkeys, 10 horses and 13 vagrants; the roundabout on Vlissingen Road; three overpasses on East Bank none of which is working. Nandlall then paused and declared that those ‘foregoing projects’ were the highlight of the APNU-AFC capital expenditure during 2015-2020. He then proceeded to APNU-AFC consumption side where $2 billion were on ‘dietary’ expenses, meaning food and drinks for ‘the boys’; scholarships gifted to Ministers and their children; millions spent on motion scales though none was delivered; $12 million monthly rent for a house in Albouystown to store drugs; properties gifted to friends and families AFTER the no-confidence motion (of December 2018); a parking meter contract which has resulted in Guyana being sued for US$ 100,000,000; a Minister who gifted contracts to her company from her own Ministry; a GY$ 200,000,000 no-bid contract for a feasibility study; $850,000 rent plus $2,000,000 monthly salary for a secretariat for the Law Reform Commission Act, though nothing was delivered.

At this point, AG Nandlall is only minutes into his speech, but the National Assembly is in rapt attention. The Opposition, to their credit, did not interrupt. One or two attempts at running interference through heckling by MP Mahipaul went unnoticed. And so it was that even the Rambunctious Quartet – Ganesh Mahipaul, Sherod Duncan, Annette Ferguson, and the young Vinceroy Jordon, fell into a state of cold saturninity.

I can tell you that even if you were watching the event on TV or on social media, it is impossible to grasp what was going on in the National Assembly during AG Nandlall’s speech at this point. If you go back to his list of PPPC achievements, you will notice that many of those accomplishments ended with the word construction. Well, every time an achievement was noted, a massive chorus of CONSTRUCTION rose up, and then like a maestro, Nandlall turned, acknowledged his colleagues, only to move on to the next salvo.

The demolition by Anil Nandlall of the “narratives of division,” propounded by the APNU-AFC had just begun. Let’s wait for Part II to see how it ended.

Dr Randy Persaud is Adviser, International Affairs, Office of the President.