The Tribune

By Inigo Zenicazelaya

Now that the new Free National Movement government has had a chance to brief the country on our financial state of affairs, I get the feeling that as bad as the dump fires have been these past few years our real Mount Vesuvius is the way the country’s money has been managed these past few years.

Fiscal House on Fire

Deputy Prime Minister K. Peter Turnquest announced last week that the country will need to borrow $722m in order to cover two years’ worth of fiscal deficits. To make matters worse, we also learned this week that the previous administration hired an additional 6500 persons in the five months leading up to the last election, ballooning payroll by $10m. And if that doesn’t give you conniptions, well just let the fact that a single ‘consultant’ was reportedly paid $20m for, I guess, ‘consulting’ during the last administration.

All the revelations that are dripping into the public domain thanks to this week’s budget debate have shocked Bahamians from West End to Sheep Cay.

Don’t get me wrong, most Bahamians ‘had a feeling’ based on the many downgrades, the lack of transparency, the incessant borrowing, and the failure to detail ‘where the VAT money gone’ that the country’s finances were a mess. We knew it was bad, but we didn’t know it was $722m in the hole bad.

It’s so bad that, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, some hedge has us over a barrel for $70m by the first week in July... ‘or else!’

It’s so bad that we have to borrow money to pay for the money we’ve already borrowed.

It’s so bad that if there was such a thing as the ‘Repo Man’ for countries, I’d bet dollars to donuts he’d be riding through our neighborhood right about now, even if he isn’t quite yet on our block.

Yes, my fellow VAT payers, we – as the wise, old people say – are in deep cow poo.

So much so that the relief many Bahamians envisaged when the majority ushered in ‘The People’s Time’ seems to be slipping away.

When he addressed the $20m paid to the foreign consultant, Minister of Health Dr Duane Sands is quoted in the Guardian as saying, “It’s like we was balling.”

Now, I’m no economist, but when a minister uses the same vernacular to describe how the government spent the people’s money that a rapper would use to describe a New Year’s Eve party on South Beach you know we are in trouble.

Our current state of affairs means that putting a dent in the $7 billion dollar debt has to become a major priority for the Minnis administration. Yet, according to DPM Turnquest, the percentage of VAT going toward paying off the debt is still to be determined. Apparently, we’re in so bad a financial state it would shock the system to do with the VAT money what the last administration had originally promised to do with the VAT money.

Although I’m horrified to hear how poorly the Christie administration handled our finances, I’m glad it’s all coming out now. We can no longer pretend we are not in bad shape.

In truth, however, I am disappointed in the way some of this information has been presented to the public. The DPM said we have a foreign consultant who was paid $20m but when asked to name names he said, “stay tuned”.

Stay tuned? Is this a reality show or reality?

And while you’re writing the script for next week’s episode of ‘Survivor: Bahamas,’ please do table the contracts that were allegedly handed out like ‘Deet’ down in MICAL. Not that the public needs much to question former MICAL MP V. Alfred Grey’s judgment, but seeing is believing.

The full expression that Hip Hop rapper Snoop Dogg made famous (and the Progressive Liberal Party obviously subscribed to) is ‘Ball till you Fall.’ Here’s hoping the new government is more aligned with gospel spirituals.