Education Minister Responds to LOO Comments

The third speaker to participate in today’s budget debate was Education Minister Francis Fonseca. Fonseca, like DPM Hyde, called out Opposition Leader Moses Barrow for citing inaccurate figures. Fonseca described Barrow’s contribution as “garbage”.  

Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Technology: “Unfortunately I had to endure almost two hours of absolute nonsense. Nonsensical talking, rambling from the Leader of the Opposition so you know I must have done something wrong and they’re punishing me today having to listen to that kind of garbage. You know when I listen to the Leader of the Opposition Mr.Speaker you know what comes to mind is a tale of absolute phantasy and fiction that really could only be woven in the mind of a really, I don’t mean to be impolite, but in the mind of a hasbeen rapper who is looking for relevance, who is looking for credibility. Complete fiction and fantasy. He spoke for almost two hours I believe, almost two hours completely without a sense of purpose, without a sense of direction. Made up his own facts, used his own statistics, we don’t know where he’s getting these statistics. You know it’s incredible. So how do you properly and rationally and responsibly respond to somebody who is living in another world, they’re operating in world of fantasy and fiction using their own data, have absolutely no regard for official statistics, official data making up their own data to meet the story that he’s trying to weave, this incredible tale that he’s trying to weave. So it’s a very sad situation. But allow me to make just a few critically important points I think. You know the leader can go all over the place talking about all sorts of different things but there are fundamental facts that cannot be avoided. You had a UDP government in 2020 after twelve years of being in office and you had a debt to GDP ratio over over 130% that was 2020 when we came into office. Today after two years in government under the John Briceno administration, under the People’s United Party administration after two years that debt to GDP ratio has been cut from over 130% to 64%.”