Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is fi­nal­ly giv­ing mean­ing to her pledge to serve the peo­ple three times over in the Cli­co mat­ter by with­draw­ing the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that would have shamed a dic­ta­tor­ship, far more a gov­ern­ment sworn to serve the peo­ple, cubed, to con­sult and to seek par­tic­i­pa­tion. I thank her for step­ping back form the edge of a very dan­ger­ous precipice. I hope that the PM will now over­see a process of con­sul­ta­tion with those tax­pay­ers who are al­so Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers and give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sug­gest ways to make her Gov­ern­ment's so-called bailout plan more ac­cept­able and less puni­tive and heart­less than the one pro­posed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's (ill) ad­vis­ers and pre­sent­ed by him in the bud­get speech. I am cer­tain that Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers do not re­al­ly want to take le­gal ac­tion and would much pre­fer to be heard by the Gov­ern­ment.

The fail­ure of suc­ces­sive UNC and PNM gov­ern­ments to do their du­ty rel­a­tive to the Cen­tral Bank's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pol­i­cy­hold­ers has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the Cli­co prob­lem and this Gov­ern­ment can­not sim­ply ig­nore that and place all the blame on pol­i­cy­hold­ers for "tak­ing risks" by buy­ing prod­ucts that were nev­er deemed il­le­gal or even risky by the Cen­tral Bank or its po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed gov­er­nors. Al­so, none of the politi­cians talk­ing now about "tak­ing risks" and "giv­ing hand­outs" ever spoke a word of warn­ing against the al­leged risk-tak­ing un­til now. None ex­cept Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, that is, and he is now be­ing crit­i­cised by the ones who saw, heard and spoke no evil then. On that note, I hope that the Prime Min­is­ter in­cludes in the terms of ref­er­ence of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to Cli­co the need to in­ves­ti­gate and make pub­lic which po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als ac­cept­ed mon­ey from Cli­co be­tween 1996 to 2010, and what were the ben­e­fits pro­vid­ed by those po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als for the mon­ey they took from Cli­co.

The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready pre­sent­ed ev­i­dence of the PNM's re­ceipt of $5 mil­lion, and there is a court mat­ter in­volv­ing a $10 mil­lion "schol­ar­ship" to ed­u­cate the chil­dren of a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter. We need to know if those were the tip of the ice­berg, and what ef­fect, if any, those Cli­co wind­falls had on the Cen­tral Bank's abil­i­ty to car­ry out its func­tions re­gard­ing statu­to­ry de­posits from Cli­co. Tax­pay­ers need to be told the full sto­ry to ful­ly un­der­stand the is­sue. I am con­fi­dent that with the con­sul­ta­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion promised in the PP man­i­festo, the Cli­co "bailout" can be re­solved to the sat­is­fac­tion of all par­ties, and Dook­er­an will learn a valu­able les­son about the im­pru­dence of?try­ing to present a "fait ac­com­pli" as gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Den­nis Leslie

Via e-mail