Grant labels Government with mismanagement of Public Funds!!
Claims intended loan is to fund Labour Party’s election campaign

By Stanford Conway
Editor-in-Chief, SKNVibes.com

Leader of the PAM – Lindsay Grant

“The government’s move to raise a resolution in Parliament to support borrowings of more than half a billion dollars to meet current requirements provides compelling evidence of escalating chaos in the Denzil Douglas Administration…a shocking level of mismanagement of the country’s finances and a brazen plot to fund the Labour Party’s election campaign through public funds.”

Grant made this pronouncement, among others, at his party’s Monthly Press Conference held at the Ocean Terrace Inn on Wednesday, September 9.

He told reporters that the amount of money the government intends to borrow from financial institutions to meet current requirements is more than the 2008 National Budget, which includes provisions for crime fighting and capital projects.

He declared that economists in the Federation and the Caribbean region are shocked at this development, noting it is incomprehensible that any country’s budget could be so badly bungled and widely off target as to warrant borrowing money in excess of the total national budget for the purpose of meeting current requirements.

St. Kitts and Nevis' Prime Minister Dr. Hon. Denzil Douglas

“The Prime Minister has the obligation to explain this to the Kittitian and Nevisian people,” he said. “Dr. Douglas also has the obligation to explain to the country whether he has already given his associate, Don Blackman, or any of his agents, the green light to approach commercial banks and financial institutions in this country or in Trinidad and Tobago, or in any country to arrange the staggering amount of money that the government of St. Kitts and Nevis is attempting to raise.”

He added that the timing of this development is of huge significance.

Grant also claims that in an effort to buy votes for the upcoming elections, the ruling party would dish out hefty pay increases and hefty packages to favoured contractors as well as various means of channeling public funds into the pockets of the Labour party top guns.

“Access to over half a billion dollars on the eve of the elections will trigger a feeding frenzy among those in office who know that they are about to be swept out by the wind of change now heading this way,” he added.

Grant posited that in accounting to the nation, the PM would have the obligation to explain how the bungled attempt at a Parliamentary resolution to authorise $.5b originated.

~~Adz:Left~~He noted that if the borrowing has already been arranged, “the Prime Minister will have to level with the country on who has or who was the intermediary between the government and the financial institution or institutions providing those funds, the rates of interest and, ultimately, the aggregate cost of all those borrowings”.

PAM’s leader stressed that borrowing $.5b from commercial lending institutions would attract high interest rates and would add close to 25 percent to the current debt burden on each citizen, who would be one of the legacies of the Labour Party Administration.

Grant noted that the PM has proclaimed the policy of using the State’s land to pay off debts, “but the country has the right to know whether this will apply to the half a billion dollars borrowing to meet current requirements”.

“Given his acknowledged arrogance and disrespect for the people,” Grant continued, “the Prime Minister is likely to refuse to give any accounting, as usual, on these issues. The Prime Minister has shown that he considers himself above the law with his hijacking of the authority of the Electoral Commission and the direct control of the Voter Certification Process.”

Grant is also of the view that the PM’s failure to give an account of his plans for arresting crime and protecting citizens, “underlines his disregard for the people at whose pleasure he enjoys the office, with the spoils of the office that he holds”.