Quality De La Grenade Products now available www.grenadamarket.com

I first heard this bold statement (in one of its few variations) way back from a well known gentleman in St. George's who was in conversation with my mother at the time.

The sophistication of this statement is in its simplicity - in that it is easy for all and sundry to understand. Yes, it is tempting to want to be the recipient of easy money or the acquisition of material wealth on easy street.

But when one stops to consider the headaches which accompany such lifestyle, one is better off re-associating oneself with the good old virtue of honesty and taking time to build riches.

Have you ever heard, the guilty conscience always fears the midnight knocking? Those who have been accustomed to working hard and waiting for the fruits of their labour to multiply will not be among those who are worried about what will happen when things change! How many people do you know who would have made some real easy money in a short space of time who ended up losing it all in as quick a space of time?

I can see many hands going up in the air as if to attempt to be first at answering this question. The experience over the years has been that such prosperity is often times short-lived. The story (and I mean story) is told of a man who was a building contractor who used his profession as a matter of course to enrich himself at the expense of his unsuspecting clients.

When his company was charged with building a house for a particular gentleman and his family, he redirected several truck loads of materials to his own site where his house was being built. Not only did he redirect materials, he also redirected workers from his client's construction site to his own.

You see, as the story continued, the contractor was crafty enough to swell the cost of his client's lavish property in order that the cost of building his could be absorbed. What is interesting is the fact that his (the contractor's) family and the client's family were longstanding friends. The contractor almost built a carbon copy (though slightly smaller) than his client's.

When everything "came out in the wash" (as old people say), the friendship was damaged for the rest of their natural lives. Interestingly, the advantaged client went on to live to a ripe old age, enjoying his life to the end well into his eighties, while the contractor during the last ten or so years of the client's life dwindled away to the point where he no longer is in business and managed to lose everything.

Stories like these are not far-fetched, as many of us can attest to similar experiences. "Hard time" comes in many forms. It can come in the form of a serious prison term where one is exposed to wearing "dungaree without underpants" and having to do some hard labour; or it can come in the form of suffering for all to see - especially when one would have escaped the wrath of the law.

During the last eleven years, we have seen certain male and female folks close to NNP justifiably called "the parasitic oligarchy". Such individuals can hardly string ten words together to make sense. They might even have difficulties to pick up their name on the ground before them - yet for all they have swollen financially.

There was one in particular who could not write a cheque for fifty dollars without his bank returning it for insufficient funds but who instead ended up building a large house on the African Continent in excess of EC$600,000 around the same time the Trinidadians through his department were constructing the poorly engineered but massively expensive piece of crap (according to Ivan) for a stadium.

There was a certain woman who went to one of our local banks with a deposit of over $300,000.00 - one lash! This same woman could not even pay an ordinary Grenadian craftsman for her beautifully carved bed not too long ago.

There was another one in the early days of the same administration who was known to have diverted cement and other building materials from the project to repair the San Souci/River Road walkway to his girlfriend's house. We have known many more who took funding earmarked for Community Development projects and made sure their driveway was properly paved while the rest of the community suffered miserably.

There are those again who have been recipients of major contracts escaping the scrutiny of the tendering process and who are known to provide back-handers to certain individuals in gratitude/appreciation. There are others who slipped through the created cracks without the scrutiny of the tendering process and provided quasi-government entities on whose boards they were influential with vehicles and made a killing on the deals.

There are those again who are known to have gone to our local banks to deposit large sums of money and when asked for source of funds literally got frightened and started calling certain people's names who have to get out of the tidy sum. These people were so-called contractors for road works, public drains, back walls, and what have you!

The list can go on to no end almost. I say to all of you who believe in true and equal justice - wait, their time will come and “all in the fullness of time”. Do not envy the so-called progress they appear to be flaunting today - for when times change and hard times start to share - it would not be your turn as you would have already had yours while they were enjoying the spoils of their dishonesty.

The only reason why the few still continue to hold on and go as far as to defend the nastiness perpetuated by the Kleptocracy, is because they never had it so good and their warped sense of right and wrong justifies their stupidity. Join with me in viewing clearly not too long from now - the hard time which is around the corner for them all.

I want to remind one and all who have been part and parcel of various "Kleptocratic" behaviors during the last eleven years - your day is coming to do hard time. The first step to be taken by any new government is to approach the right quarters in Washington for State-to-State co-operation in getting Eric Resteiner, Timothy Bass and David Marchant to spill the beams on the Briefcase issue.

In closing let me use this opportunity to congratulate Mrs. Nikoyan Roberts on her elevation to the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Grenada Board of Tourism. I trust that the exposure she has had to tourism over the years that she was involved as a senior person in the day to day running of the board's affairs will come in useful and would multiply positively to the further development of our country's product.

I want to agree with George Worme's Editorial in his last issue of the Grenada Today when he voiced concern for the appointment of Kenny Lalsingh to the post of President of the Senate. Lalsingh was not only implicated in the Cement scandal, and Health Disco fiasco.

The next time any of you meet him ask the said Lalsingh whether he can shed any light on the person in the Brathwaite government who tampered with the law and got three duty free vehicles in five years when the financial rules provided for the granting of duty-free concessions on only one vehicle in that timeframe. Some people really know how to bend the rules. And what is sad is that every time they open their mouth to speak you hear them say all the time that they are always prepared to work in the national interest.

Like the GRENADA TODAY said, I too feel that Nikoyan's dear husband, Kennedy, should have been considered for the position considering his bravery to brake ranks with the "intelligencia" of which he is a part to appear publicly in company with such tainted elements. Ken must know what he is doing and I wish him well.

Let me again remind all those who have been involved in making easy money over the last eleven years in particular, that your day is almost at hand to pay with hard time. I can hear the jail door banging! Someone told me recently that that sound is not a sound anyone would wish to hear - Badang! Bang!