There are increasingly hopeful signs that the Peoples’ Partnership Government is finally clearing enough of the morass of corruption, incompetence and even sabotage which they discovered embedded in the government which the PNM surrendered to them.
The enormity of the tasks, putting out the fires, clearing the floods, stopping the corruption, and dealing with the sudden, possibly deliberate, upsurge in crime, all conspired to prevent the government from moving more effectively on their own agenda.
And the tasks were made more difficult by the ongoing petulant behaviour of the PNM. They, having taken the irresponsible decision to suddenly demit office so that they could turn the spotlight of blame for the failed state they left upon the newcomers, are committed to a yapping harassment of every step the new government tries to take.
And the PNM were better equipped to harass and criticize than the Partnership was to move forward. The PNM knew all the failings, the corruption, the deals, the debts which they had incurred. The new government, and we, the people, knew some of it, like what the Uff Report had revealed, but what has since been revealed, and is being revealed, staggers the imagination.
But we are getting there. Like with the peeling of onions, more and more of the PNM corruption and gross incompetence is being revealed. Each layer exposed presents something new to examine, but these ongoing discoveries and revelations also serve to distract us and delay the work of governance which needs to be implemented.
On the crime front, there are encouraging signs, and I am not referring to the claimed 20 per cent reduction in violent crime. I am referring to the coming exposure of the genesis of the crime wave, and to white-collar crime.
On Monday, the Commission of Inquiry into the attempted coup of 27th July 1990 will begin. That event, hidden away by the governments of Patrick Manning and Basdeo Panday for over twenty years (and, as we shall soon confirm, for good reason!) will now face enquiry and exposure.
Some persons will volunteer to come forward and give their evidence. We must all expect that the Commission will issue summons to persons who do not come forward on their own, and who may have been implicated by the leader of the attempted coup. This will include persons whom the coup leader has already claimed were informed of some of the plans.
There is a strong body of opinion, including among the security services, that our current crime wave has its genesis in the 1990 coup attempt. I believe that after the Inquiry, this “opinion” will be confirmed, and revealed in ways which will give an impetus to dealing with the crime wave. But let us leave that for the Commissioners for now.
Submissions are also being invited by the Commission of Inquiry into what I will simply call the CLICO Affair. This COI, I submit, will reveal the crime at the other end of the scale, although that is not their prime mandate. But how could they not eventually turn to the exposure and investigation of white collar crime when the CLICO unraveling begins?
We see that the CLICO Policyholders’ Group, having heard that a rating agency is forecasting an improved year for T&T, is again claiming “their” money from the state, not incidentally from Duprey, Monteil, Karen or CLICO.
Peter Permell is even quoted as saying that the “flexibility” to pay his group’s claims could also be “extended to unions and contractors who are owed money by the government”.
HELLO! The workers and the contractors are owed money for work and for services provided to the state.
What work or service have the CLICO claimants provided to the state or to the people of this country? I contend that the reverse is probably true, and I wait for the CLICO COI to eventually pronounce upon this.
But for a start, I want to know the list of persons who are demanding that the government reward them for their stupid investment. And the list must show sums being claimed by each claimant.
I was horrified at first to hear that there are persons whose claims were in excess of $10 million. But people in the know laughed at me and said there are persons with sums exceeding hundreds of millions!
They even called names and amounts. Now I do not believe that any millionaire would put all of their money in one basket, especially that CLICO basket, because they all “knew”.
So this means that some of these people, with hundreds of millions stashed away elsewhere now want the government to reimburse their failed investment.
Bringing 1990 and CLICO out into the public domain will be taking two tremendous “foundation” steps in the war against crime.
No comments:
Post a Comment