The Tribune

THE story of the PLP’s jaunt to Bermuda is becoming increasingly tangled – and it doesn’t need to be.

FNM chairman Dr Duane Sands described the whole affair as “smudgy”, a word he recalled being used by one of his predecessors in his post, the late Charles Maynard. He’s not wrong. The details are inexplicably hazy.

It wasn’t clear whether this was a government trip or whether it was a political party trip. It wasn’t clear who had paid. Then the PLP said they paid and showed a cheque to prove it. But it was after the fact, a reimbursement.

Then Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis says that cheque didn’t cover the full amount. And now in today’s Tribune, we discover no one knows the full cost anyway.

Press secretary Clint Watson said yesterday he was unable to say how much money was spent on hotel accommodations, transport, food, per diems and so on. One wonders why private travellers would be getting a per diem in the first place except from their organisation.

Reassuringly, or not, he said: “As for breaking the law, I can’t speak to that.”

Instead, he pushed the story onto Mr Davis’ plate, saying: “What I can say is remember the Prime Minister is also the Minister of Finance and so he has jurisdiction to approve and to make determinations on certain things. In this case when he recognised it was an element that involved political parties he made the decision himself to handle the finance from his political party and not to use government (money).”

So now we need to know the timeline of when Mr Davis made that decision – because as we know the cheque from the PLP came later.

It’s an interesting travel incentive scheme from the government – can any business or organisation use the government as a free loan system to repay later or is it just the political party of choice?

Mr Watson added of Mr Davis’ decision: “He didn’t have to come and say this wasn’t an official trip. He could have said yes, it was an official trip and we’re going to move on or whatever.”

No, Mr Watson, he could not – not as long as it was a trip involving party members for party goals, not unless you’re comfortable with government funds being used for party political goals.

As to why the cost of the trip is still not known, Mr Watson chalked it up, almost with a shrug, as being down to inefficiencies in the public service.

He said: “That’s not uncommon. You are talking about a public service sector, you won’t have that a week later. What happens is when you approve a trip you approve the trip to travel. What happens is the accounting takes place from the back end as to who actually went, did they receive per diem, was it actually processed, what hotel was used, was it approved, what was the other hotel. All of that comes in the back area to your expenses for travel because things change and that has to be done on the back end.”

Interesting. So what Mr Watson is confirming there is that the government handled all the administration side of things for the PLP as well. Why would the public service have to handle any of that for a private trip? How much is the PLP paying the government for the time of public workers to handle their accounts?

At the start of this article, we said things don’t need to be this tangled. Not if everyone simply tells the truth, and tells the full story. In an earlier editorial, we wrote about the need for transparency – and that every trip should routinely detail costs, membership of the retinue, and so on.

This one is clear as mud. Costs of hotels should be known ahead of time. Costs of flights should be well established. Any transport rented would have receipts ahead of time. As mentioned, per diems should only matter if it is a government trip – it’s not government’s job to put spending money in pockets for a private trip. What was the budget for the trip? Or must we wait for what sounds good rather than what is correct?

This isn’t the only area the government needs to show transparency – there are questions too about what advice Mr Davis and Works Minister Alfred Sears received on the BPL hedging scheme after the appearance of a letter tabled by FNM leader Michael Pintard. Given their statements on the matter, that could also raise questions about how accurate their statements were to Parliament.

Again, all that is needed to avoid such tangles is to be transparent – and not to look so smudgy.

If this is how the separation of government and private finances looks, heaven help us if we ever try to implement laws on campaign finances.

In the meantime, if you’re travelling somewhere, ask the government if they’ll pay for it and you’ll pay them back later – see how far you get.