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| Pic www.therepublicsquare.com |
The JVP’s Sunil Handunnetti captured the Opposition’s
sentiments with regard to Budget 2015 best.
He said ‘අද
අය වැය දිනය නෙමෙයි...වඩා හොඳයි මේකට අල්ලස් දිනය කියල කිව්වා නම්’ (this is not Budget Day…it
would be more appropriate to call it Bribe Day). There was at once dismay (at the political
impact of the budget) and acknowledgment that at least on the face of it the
budget would resonate well with a wide cross section of the population.
There’s
something in it for everyone, this is clear.
No, it’s not that everyone got all the goodies in their respective
wish-lists. The President is not Santa
Clause. Santa Clause is pure fiction;
the President has to deal with the real.
‘The real’ is about what’s there to give. It is about who gets how much of what. Or at
least, that’s what we are supposed to think.
It was
bound to be a goodies-budget, a budget to please everyone. Except the Opposition. That’s a no-brainer when there’s a major
election coming up. It’s one of those benefits
enjoyed by the incumbent. Nothing
illegal about it of course, but the fact remains that the budget was presented
not just by the President (in his capacity as Minister of Finance) but a
President who in all likelihood would be running for re-election a few months
from now. That’s to be expected from a politician and
certainly from one who unarguably reads the political equation much better than
anyone else around.
This
is why the budget pulled the propaganda rug from under the feet of the Opposition. It bested by quite a margin the if-elected
pledges that have been doing the rounds.
But that’s exactly where the problem lies. Politicians are made of promises. Pledges are easy. The nutshell versions are full of promise
because they deal with aggregate numbers and broad categories. The devil is in the details. This is where the Opposition has a
responsibility. They have to dig it all
up and offer the people a more detailed picture of deliverability.
If one
were to check the nutshell versions of previous budgets and weigh the pledges
against what actually materialized, one would be cynical of grand
promises. The difference this time is
that the ‘doing’ has to get off the ground fast. Delays and excuses would only help the
Opposition.
This
is where the most neglected aspect of the budget comes into play – income. A ‘spending budget’ warms everyone’s heart
and this one is warmer than usual. But
one can’t spend that which one does not have.
You can’t plan expenditure if you don’t have a reasonable estimate of
income. Revenue cannot be conjured. It’s basic logic. If you don’t have as much money as you need,
you have to borrow. That’s debt. The sweet thing about debt as far as the
Government is concerned is that it belongs to the public. The other sweet thing about debt is that it
is a headache that hits later on. Think
of credit cards. You are essentially spending what you don’t have. But you have to pay. Later. With interest. Pay-day is not a happy day, whichever way you
think about it.
But right now, as things stand and with elections coming up,
if you want a one-line description of what it was all about, Joe Biden puts it
best: ‘Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you
what you value.’
Votes, folks.
In the coming days we’ll have a budget vote on a
vote-budget. The Government has the
numbers in Parliament. The budget will
fix the numbers outside.