By COREY CONNELLY Tuesday, September 8 2009

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday yesterday described the 2009/2010 fiscal package for the country as the most shameless budget he had ever heard.

“She (Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira) regurgitated everything she has been regurgitating for the last seven years and at the end of it all, do you think anybody would believe that we getting water next year? Do you think anybody believes that their roads are going to be fixed?” he asked reporters outside of Committee Room Two of the Red House, shortly before the Opposition met in emergency session to discuss the budget.

Panday said he was not impressed by any of the measures announced during the package.

“Because nothing is going to be implemented....That has been their (PNM’s) history,” he said.

“When we come to deal with the budget, we are going to point out to the country how ineffective they are, how they are guilty of total mal-administration, how they will come to the House and say all kinds of things and implement nothing.”

During her three-hour presentation, Nunez-Tesheira announced several income-generating measures aimed, in part, at minimising traffic violations and road carnage.

These include whopping increases from $200 to $2,000 the fines imposed for unauthorised use of the Priority Bus Route and for driving on the shoulders of the nation’s highways.

Of the measures, Panday said: “You ever see any police on the highway. First you have to catch them (errant drivers). You have to hold people. You have to arrest them.

“Have you ever seen how many policemen there are on the highway? All of this is empty wishful promises which they have been making for the last seven years. It is a shameful budget.”

The Couva North MP said the Government was trying to compensate for squandering the nation’s patrimony through initiatives for income generation.

“Having squandered the national patrimony of oil and gas, they are now raising the fines committed on the highway as a means of raising money which is such a foolish thing to depend on for a budget because you first need policemen...But the policemen are themselves busy doing their own thing. So, how can you have any hope that they will realise this money in the budget?”

The Opposition Leader also took issue with the Government’s decision to predicate the budget on a conservative oil price of US$55 a barrel.

“To predict any price of oil and gas is really an exercise in futility because it may go up, it may go down. If it goes up, you put it into the fund. If it goes down you readjust your plans. So nobody knows what they are going to implement because they don’t know what their income is going to be.”

Panday also lamented that he had not heard anything to alleviate the plight of the distressed and disadvantaged in the society but said he was not disappointed that he did not hear anything about the fight against crime.

“Why should they talk about it. She was smart not to talk about it. That is why I said it was a shameful budget.”

Panday, who is battling the flu, said he would lead the Opposition’s response to the budget when debate begins in the Parliament on Friday.

“If I survive (the flu),” he joked.