The greatest betrayal in the budget is the regime's failure to provide funding for a new election that will restore to the people the democratic freedoms stolen from them a gunpoint in December 2006.

These are the words of Former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase on the allocation given to the Elections Office in the 2009 National Budget.

Qarase adds it was always possible to organise a poll at a slightly later date next year but the lack of a budget allocation and a timetable for a 2009 election has revealed the regime's true intentions, to cling onto power.