Lame attempts to defend a disturbing budget

Wed, Jun 18th 2014, 12:03 PM

Dear Editor,
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' licenses, leaving drivers with only receipts as proof that renewals have been applied for and paid. 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 claiming supposed problems with its design.
Only recently, restroom 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 opening of the completed state of the art, new Critical Care Unit continues to be delayed. Claims are that the delay is the result of squabbling over who will benefit from the purchase of $35 million in medical equipment - equipment that has already been put out to bid and a winning bidder declared.
The winning supplier, the American conglomerate General Electric, may have already conveyed its concerns to the United States government over any pressure it is receiving to deliver the medical equipment through a Bahamian company.
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 checkbook 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 reluctant to continue 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 $10 million budgeted but not used for the failed mortgage relief program, for $10 million budgeted but not accounted for in the implementation of the Charter for Governance, for the $10 million allocated to Urban Renewal 2.0 and for $50-plus million 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 presumably 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 legalize 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 7.5 percent - with what sounds like a promise of its increase (likely to the originally proposed 15 percent) in the next budget cycle.
In the fairy tale 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, five ministers of state, four parliamentary secretaries and two 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

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