The last week or so has been filled with revelations from the new Team Unity Administration.
First, Attorney General Vincent Byron shared some juicy (pun intended) information on the squandermania of the now dismantled Department of Constituency Empowerment.
He told us about $250,000 spent to build a fence and $200,000 spent to paint a wall, $18,000 to build a hard court in Keys Village (where there has been a hard court for many, many years), $143,000 for a space adoption project in Hermitage, Cayon, but there seems to be no sight or sign of it at that Hermitage, or at Hermitage Road, Old Road, or at any place named ‘Hermitage’ anywhere on planet Earth, etc.
One million dollars spent in January, 2015, alone on these things! Remember, elections were in February.
We’ve also heard of the Government Assistance Program (GAP), purportedly designed for people at and below the poverty line, although people earning $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, and more, monthly were the happy recipients of vouchers from the Government, using tax payers’ money, to pay for fridges, stoves, furniture and other goodies, leading up to the election.
I know one office worker who was, and is, close to a particular candidate who got her voucher for $2,900 and bought herself a nice appliance with it.
And we’ve begun hearing of stories of PEP.
One of the many things that have to be explained to the public is how and why certain employers were able to put their regular, permanent workers of long standing on the PEP program. A business owned by my family had its three workers, ranging in experience on the job from ten to thirty years, put on the program and their wages paid by PEP.
How can that be right? Who could have allowed or countenanced this?
What could be more wrong than taxpayers being asked to subsidize businesses by paying those businesses’ wage and salary bills.
I’m not talking about apprentices, engaged in a specified, short-term basis. No, I’m talking about full-time seasoned workers.
This is not an assault on the workers. They are by no means to be blamed for this.
But subsidizing good and successful businesses in this manner, that is to say, paying the wages and salaries of their permanent employees, is, nothing short of an abomination. It is a misuse and abuse of public funds.
And subsidizing bad businesses in this open-ended way is a disincentive to those businesses improving, and is also a sinful waste and abuse of public money. It’s like pouring water into a bucket that has no bottom.
Then in his Press Conference on April 28, Prime Minister Harris told us about the SIDF, among other things.
He said it earned $1.47 billion between 2007 and 2014, and during that time it spent $1.26 billion.
In a different world, this would mean that the SIDF should have a surplus, even after all of the squandermania, of $200 million. But as the PM said, pretty much all of that $200 million is committed to payment obligations.
So, in effect, Douglas has dried out the SIDF. And while drying it out, he put the Economic Citizenship Program at risk with all of these undesirables who got passports and diplomatic passports, bringing the country to the point where the US issued an advisory and Canada ended the visa-free entry for our citizens.(When was the last time you checked to see how easy it is to get a Canadian visa?)
Meanwhile, can you tell me what we have to show for the spending of $1.26 billion of SIDF money? Could some of that money have been used to properly develop the jobless among us, and graduate them to a more sustainable and independent existence? Could he have fixed the Basseterre High School and all of our other schools and government facilities that need to be fixed? Could he have made our hospitals more modern and efficient? Could more lives have been saved? Could he have given public servants a better deal? Could he have reduced the VAT and removed it from food, medicine and funerals as Team Unity just did? Could he have simply exempted those things from VAT from the very beginning? Could he have reduced the high rents that Government has been paying? Could more people have gotten their own homes?
Was spending in the best, and sustainable interests of the people his number one priority, or was he more concerned with travelling the world and having people run up cell phone bills of up to $30,000 a month, paid for by the people of St. Kitts & Nevis who he is now pleading with to march with him on Labour Day?
Could the $4.74 million in legal fees that were allegedly paid to a person who was at the same time serving as our permanent ambassador to the United Nations have been better spent for the people of this country?
Is any of this related to the fact that the people of St. Kitts & Nevis were robbed of the right to see the annual financial statements of the SIDF and the Social Security Board since 2011? What will happen when we see these reports? What more will be revealed?
Without accusing anybody of anything, let me tell you that there’s a Belize legal case in which it was decided, ultimately by the Caribbean Court of Justice, that an Attorney General can take legal action against former Government Ministers, not only for misfeasance in public office (misfeasance is a civil wrong, a tort) but also, through a Director of Public Prosecutions, for malfeasance in public office (malfeasance is a crime).
The CCJ, in strongly making to point that Governments have to act, said this:
“ The failure to detect, investigate, prosecute and punish corruption has a corrosive impact on democracy and the rule of law. We underestimate, at our peril, the degree to which such failure affords encouragement to the criminal elements in society and contributes to a burgeoning crime rate”.
And the Court went on to say that the misfeasance route is a less painful one for the perpetrators than the malfeasance route, because, to use a well known saying, in the case of malfeasance ‘jail could be in that’.
Go and accuse the Caribbean Court of Justice of looking to victimize anyone because it has ruled that a Government has an obligation to detect, investigate, prosecute and punish corruption!
And if you’ve heard it from me once, you’ve heard it from me a hundred times: Corruption in high places contributes to increased so-called blue collar crime. Now you’ve heard that the Caribbean Court of Justice says the same thing.
I say: let the processes continue, and let the chips fall where they may. The Government must discharge its obligation to democracy, to the rule of law, to the people, and to the good name of St. Kitts & Nevis. It must, and if it fails to do so, it is just as guilty as the perpetrators of misfeasance or malfeasance.
So if any wrongdoing is discovered, whether it be tantamount to misfeasance in public office or misfeasance in public office, the perpetrators and beneficiaries must be made to pay.
Doing that will not only send the right message to anyone who has acted corruptly in public office in the past, but it will serve as a warning to today’s, and tomorrow’s, incumbents that they must conduct themselves, and the affairs of Government, in a proper manner.
Or else!
We have a new Government which has a glorious opportunity to start clean, continue clean, and, eventually, to end clean. Our hopes rest on that. No selfishness, no ‘my constituency first’, no piling up of cronies on boards, etc.
Years ago, a friend of mine said that persons elected to public office must be paid fairly, and if they’re caught stealing a pencil, they should go to jail.
I agree.
The case is: Attorney General of Belize vs Marin and Coye. Check it out.
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