The Tribune

EDITOR, The tribune.

The mockery of our laws and of our cultural norms and traditions that fill the daily news has forced me to abandon my self-imposed halt on commentary in the media. I, like another of your writers, had thought it best to ask that someone waken me when our country was finally free of the cabal now masquerading as a Government.

The Budget presentation and the lame attempts to defend it have disturbed my sleep.

In the real world, businesses are continuing to downsize and lay off workers; unemployment is very high and rising and the number of children living in poverty is increasing.

Violent crime and crime against property are out of control.

Police reservists and a number of other persons engaged in the public sector are being paid late or not at all.

Our city streets, parks and open green spaces are overgrown and dirty.

Garbage collection is spotty.

The road traffic department ran out of supplies for the issuance of drivers’ licences leaving drivers with only receipts as proof that application for renewal of drivers licences have been applied and paid for. Now the Passport office has run out of supplies creating a backlog in the issuance of passports.

Following an inexplicable delay in completing the new terminal at the Marsh Harbour International Airport, it has been opened with the Minister of Transport engineering supposed problems with its design.

Only recently, rest room facilities at Montagu Beach Park have been completed – two years since the General Election at which time they were only weeks away from completion.

Essential medications are frequently exhausted or in short supply at our public hospitals and clinics.

Bahamians are being lined up on trolleys in corridors in the Emergency Room section of the Princess Margaret Hospital while the Government delays the opening of the completed state-of-the-art new Critical Care Unit. Allegations are that the delay is the result of squabbling over who will receive commissions from the purchase of $35m medical equipment – equipment that has already been put out to bid and a winning bidder declared.

The winning supplier, the American Conglomerate – General Election – may have already conveyed its concerns to the United States Government over pressure it is receiving to deliver the medical equipment through a Bahamian company whose ownership includes a former PLP Minister and a number of PLP cronies.

And then we are told that the Government will not give an account of the real projected cost for the introduction of its long promised National Health Insurance Plan until after it is in place. In other words, they have an open cheque book to spend as they see fit on consultants and the like, presumably at a rate to rival monies already spent by this Government on advisors and consultants on gaming and on tax reform!

The Government is not paying essential bills. Some vendors, due to late and non-payment by some Government agencies, are no longer extending credit to Government Departments like the Police Force for parts and service of their vehicles.

Still the Government has refused to account for the expenditure of budgeted and borrowed millions of dollars: for $10m budgeted, but not used for the failed mortgage relief programme; for $10m budgeted but now accounted for in the implementation of the Contract for Governance; for the $10m allocated to Urban Renewal 2.0; and for $50m plus borrowed but not paid to Baha Mar in respect of the Government’s share of the cost for the construction of the diverted West Bay Street.

All of these millions were budgeted. Many of these millions were borrowed for specific purposes. All of these millions have been spent, but Government Ministers tell us that they must borrow more to pay some of these same bills which they failed to make provisions for in their budgeting process! The Government has also announced that it will ignore the public will expressed in an expensive “non-Referendum” and regulate and hence legalise retroactively the illegal numbers business.

In the last Budget, the Government introduced a new customs processing fee that increased the cost of living across the board. Now, it has confirmed the introduction of a new tax VAT at 7 per cent – with what sounds like a promise of its increase (likely to the originally proposed 15 per cent) in the next budget cycle.

In the “fairytale land” in which this PLP Government lives, Cabinet Ministers, led by the Prime Minister and the roaming Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell, continue to travel internationally at any and every opportunity – always first class and always with a delegation of hangers-on but never accounting for monies being spent from the public purse.

And, they continue their support for ridiculous recommendations to increase the salary and allowances paid to part-time members of parliament and a Gussiemae Cabinet of 14 Portfolio Ministers, 5 Ministers of State, 4 Parliamentary Secretaries and 2 MPs appointed to serve as salaried public sector corporations.

In that same “PLP dream land” we are asked to find it acceptable for the Government’s tax advisor to be a tax cheat; for the MP Chairman of The Bahamas Electricity Corporation to be $200,000 in debt to the Corporation which he heads; and for the foreign head of the much heralded BAMSI Agricultural Institute in Andros not to be as academically qualified as one might expect.

They would also have us believe that extensive marine dredging to create a turning basin and berth for a mega cruise ship in the heart of our most prized, pristine game fishing capital – Bimini, will not endanger the sustainability of eco-friendly tourism! I fully understand the bafflement expressed by Appellant Court Justice Conteh and that of the Privy Council on the process or non-process involved in the grant of permits for the dredging.

But that is only par for the course. In that same “delusional land” in which this PLP Government would have us live, we are supposed to believe that the return of Leon Williams as the CEO of BTC was not the result of Government interference. Lord have mercy on The Bahamas!

KIRKLAND TURNER

Nassau,

June 17, 2014