BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, August 20, 2010 (Labour Secretariat) - Nada. Zero. Nothing. Nought. Zilch. Nil. Zip. All these words can be used to describe the People’s Action Movement (PAM) and the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) contributions to the recently held debate on the Value Added Tax (VAT) Bill in the National Assembly after three days of incendiary arguments. The only thing missing in the exchange on the bill was fisticuffs.
The Bill was eventually passed into law on August 11, 2010.
The opposition members came to Parliament unprepared, offering no level-headed alternative or sound rationale for opposing the bill, other than that of playing politics and seeking cheap political mileage.
Prime Minister Douglas was not short on adjectives when he described their vacuous arguments as “ridiculous”, “absurd” and “preposterous”.
Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Mark Brantley, even went as far in his absurdity to say that “even the dead will have to pay VAT”.
Maybe Brantley wanted to say that if we don’t pay VAT we are dead. That might have been a more logical statement given the fact that the Federation is undergoing reforms to stabilize the local economy.
Eugene Hamilton, Parliamentary Representative for Constituency 8, was just as absurd as Brantley when he said that he recommended a 10 percent VAT rate. Hamilton clearly could not have been serious.
Anyone with a brain could clearly see that he had no meaningful or sensible recommendation to make. Hamilton was simply trying to score cheap political shots and to give the impression that the PAM was on the side of the poor. But poor people will not be fooled by his party’s desperate attempt to win their confidence and trust.
PAM Senator, Vincent Byron Jr. spoke passionately about personal income tax, which the Simmonds-led PAM Administration abolished when it got into power in 1980. When asked if he would want to re-introduce personal income tax, he said he didn’t say that, but that he preferred it to the VAT.
In these times of financial instability, the world over, it is no time for pie-in-the-sky solutions to complex and challenging realities.
It is the same folly that the PAM brought to the election campaign earlier this year.
When many countries in the world were talking about cutting back on spending and so many people have lost their jobs, the PAM was proffering a raise in pay for public and other government employees; and also zero unemployment. In other words they were offering to the people of this country utopia.
Hamilton’s recommendation of a 10 percent VAT is synonymous with their ludicrous offer during the election campaign to sell land at 99 cents per square foot.
The people of the Federation rejected the empty promises and lack of real commitment from the PAM when they voted the Labour Government back into power for a historic fourth consecutive time.
On one hand they charge the Labour Administration with being fiscally reckless, an administration that has racked up a huge public debt but on the other hand the promises that they made during the election gave no assurance that they were concerned with reducing the debt.
The PAM highlighted during the 3-day session in Parliament that the Government had been grandiose in its spending but never underlined the tremendous development that has taken place in the country in housing, education, increases in entrepreneurship, infrastructure development and the advent of a thriving tourism and services sector since the closure of the sugar industry in 2005.
The implementation of a VAT is nothing new in the Caribbean Community and St. Kitts and Nevis is one of the last CARICOM countries to introduce it.
There is nothing to be feared from the introduction of the VAT. Its implementation must not be viewed simply in terms of reducing the public debt but it must be seen in terms of Government collecting sufficient revenue to improve the services that it offers its citizens. In the long run both Government and people win.
Prime Minister Douglas pointed out in one of his press conferences that the VAT was only one step in an eight-point stabilization plan among countries of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which included tax reform and financial reform among others.
Despite the gloom and doom painted by opposition parties in the Federation, everyone stands to benefit from the VAT in the long run.
