BY LLOYD NOEL

SENDING WHICH WRONG MESSAGE - AND TO WHO?

In every walk of life, be it private dealings, or public affairs, and in professional matters of every kind - individuals, groups or organisations, governments, political parties, Presidents and Prime Ministers, all have their likes and dislikes, supporters and detractors.

And usually, or generally, those on any side of the many fences - all have their own peculiar reasons or motives for the position they take or maintain.

That is life and how it unfolds - or as it is said in local parlance, “that is how the cuckoo crumbles”.

But over and above all the fanfare, or criticisms, or hero-worship for one reason or another - those who seek to gain control of organisations, or groups of any kind, or the governance of States or Countries - which in turn amounts to the wielding of power over people and their lives, they do have

some added responsibilities and duties that demand a much greater level of performance, and ethical standard, and integrity in their public offices.

The same can be said about parents who, as individuals before they decide to enter a relationship that would naturally produce children - they too have a serious duty and solemn responsibility to care for and bring up the children to be a credit to themselves and the society they live in.

As to the thousands of parents who recklessly neglect their duties and responsibilities to the children they produce, that dilemma is an ongoing problem for societies worldwide, and we in the Caribbean in particular.

But while we can never change the parents of those children - except to a minimal extent by adoption at a very young age, where the mothers put them up for adoption sometimes soon after birth - we can always change those we elect to run the Nation’s affairs, as and when the majority decide on the time for change.

Against that background, which, if operated and heeded in the interest and welfare of the very people they were elected or appointed to serve - the systems that have been put in place, and tried and tested over many centuries as fair and reasonable for the governance of any civilised state or society, those systems can be utilised for the benefits of all citizens.

But for one reason or another, and often times for many reasons that baffle and frustrate the minds and thinking processes of reasonable human beings - those in control of State power do their own contrary things over and over again, to the detriment of all concerned.

And when - as is the very situation facing us today - they realise the walls are crumbling around them, they have bled the system to its dying embers, they have gone beyond the point of no return in so many areas - they shamelessly seek to tighten the straps of bondage and call on the long-standing sufferers to make more sacrifices, those bearing the brunt of the burden have got to stand up and rebel by all means - or perish as slaves on their knees.

We have all heard the slogan before, from both the P.M. and Minister for Finance, that we cannot afford to be sending the wrong message to the international community - who have given us ($100M U.S.) One Hundred Million (U.S.) Dollars in aid since “Ivan”, and had pledged Three Hundred Millions U.S. dollars.

And because the T.U.C., in the interest and welfare of its financially burdened and suffering members, have taken the only reasonable option open to them - to have the (5%) five percent “Income Tax” postponed indefinitely, until the economy is back on its feet to be able to support the “Tax” - the said Minister of Finance was again rehashing the same worn out and meaningless cliche last week Monday night, about the Government and people sending the wrong message.

And that prompted the burning question - from whom - to whom?

The Minister’s case is that the “so-called Levy” is intended to raise about $ 4-5 Millions (E.C.) per year for three years, to help the reconstruction process since Ivan.

In the same breath, the Minister said he knows and fully understands that plenty people are in serious financial straits - they still struggling to repair their damaged homes, they have undertaken second mortgages to do the repairs, they are faced with an escalating cost of living that has gone up 30-40 percent over the last three months, and destined to go even further in the New Year.

He stated further, that the business houses have sacrificed many millions in revenue losses - and they therefore cannot afford to pay increased wages and salaries to those same suffering people.

With all that knowledge and understanding at his disposal, he still insists the people must make sacrifices.

With their backs against the last wall, their pockets empty, the stove standing with no cooking gas to light it, and or no food to cook anyway - so the eating tables are bare - those desperate people are being asked to get blood from stones.

And then the Minister boldly suggested, that what the TUC should have done was seek dialogue with Government, to discuss ways of relieving those most in need from the additional financial burden.

But the TUC Acting President, Mrs. Madonna Harford, then read from a letter the TUC and other Social Partners had sent to the Minster of Labour, and the very Minister of Finance in October, asking for a meeting to discuss the matter.

Up to last week Monday night they were still awaiting an answer, and the Minister sitting on the side of her never offered, not even an excuse for having ignored the letter.

Yet now that the workers, through their unions, have decided that enough is enough and they can take no more - the same Minister is expressing surprise at their action, and still mouthing empty words like sacrifice, and responsibility, and patriotism, and reasonableness, etc. etc.

And when someone called in and mentioned, among the many financial scandals surrounding this Government, the Call Centre Fiasco that drained the Treasury of about Seventeen Millions of dollars, from the Government guaranteed Loan, the Government Investment, and the payment of the Cable and Wireless debt for Call Centre - with the $4 Millions profit for the Government from the same Company as dividends - the Minister responded that people are forgetting the “benefits” from the Call Centre Project.

He hinted that over Eight Hundred (800) women were employed in that project for a few years. All now sitting at home.

Readily accepting the Minister’s figures, and the benefits to those workers who were employed in the scheme - the consequential questions beg themselves, what happened to that well-researched and lucrative project?

How much, if any, of the loans and investments were paid back to the Treasury? Who was responsible for giving account and where is the account?

With more than a year since Call Centre gone out of business, and still no report or account from those who were running the business - about the Seventeen Millions of the people’s money invested therein - who is sending the wrong message to our Aid Donors?

The many other financial blunders, that have been recorded and documented over the last few years - all dealing with the peoples money under the supervision of the same Minister of Finance - do not need to be repeated here again, but when taken into consideration in the light of the Minister’s statement of sacrifice and sending the wrong message - the question quoted above can be repeated dozens of times; who has sent, or still sending, the wrong message to Aid Donors and the International Community?

The message is also sent in many other ways. Take, for example, the Petro Caribe deal our Government hurriedly entered into with Venezuela - when it was very obvious that President Hugo Chavez was simply using the Caribbean mini-states to score propaganda political points against President George Bush and the U.S.A.

And even when our longstanding trusted neighbours next door in T&T - told us in no uncertain terms that we were being ungrateful and short-sighted by the action we were taking in signing up, we not only went ahead and signed but the Minister of Agriculture and Energy, Hon. Gregory Bowen, went out of his way to praise the deal, and downgraded Texaco and Shell as though they had done nothing for us and could be discarded with impunity.

Not unexpectedly, the Secretary-General of CARICOM, Mr. Edwin Carrington, was last week telling the region they were misled and misguided in signing the fly-by-night deal. But the message was sent and the damage had already been done.

We may also be well on track to boycotting many reputable Institutions, of which we are members or participants as a CARICOM State in the Americas.

The OAS, the FTAA, and the -Summit of the Americas that are usually sponsored and hosted by the U.S.A. in Miami - are bodies that exclude Cuba, because of its disgraceful record of ill-treatment of its own people, and its denial of human rights to anyone who questions the dictatorial policies in Castro’s gun-controlled State in this day and age.

A group in Barbados is urging CARICOM States, including Grenada, to boycott all the above to bring the U.S.A. to its senses to remove the embargo against Cuba, and thus allow Castro to be welcomed in those institutions.

That and Fifteen Green Donkeys in CARICOM, the group will not see, whether those CARICOM Heads foolishly boycott the institutions or not - as some may very well do to show how independent they think they are.

So with those kinds of messages already at large - poor and suffering Grenadians inability/poverty to be able to pay the (5%) five percent, is no wrong message being sent - but reality and reason seeking recogniton.

And so it only leaves for me to wish you all who read this column, as well as those who hear about it but cannot read it for one reason or another - God’s richest blessings for a more stable and prosperous New Year.