Broker than the Ten Commandments
Published:Tuesday | November 22, 2011 | 12:00 AM
by Daniel Thwaites
Think of Jamaica as a household. We've mortgaged the house, maxed out the credit cards, sold the car and auctioned the furniture. We've locked off the phone to hide from the debt collectors, eaten the yard fowl, and still we have no idea how to pay for Granny or the kids. Things have got so bad that one neighbour is taking liberties and another is scandaling wi name.
Translating that into national terms, we owe more than $1.6 trillion and are running 130 per cent annual deficit over GDP (mortgage and credit cards). We're hiding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (dodging the debt collector). And we're selling off everything except the Cockpit Country (car, furniture and yard fowl are history)! Now the prime minister of Britain is taking liberties, and Standard & Poor's (S&P) have wi name a road a rinse it out.
In the last fiscal year, servicing the debt cost $230.5 billion, approximately three-quarters of the $314.5 billion collected in taxes and grants. That left only $84 billion to cover all the Government's other expenses. That amount can't even pay the public-sector salaries, much less ballooning pension obligations. Technically, there is no money for education, health, or policing to check for any more chainsaws and crocodiles lurking about West Kingston. It's all borrowed money! We're broker than the Ten Commandments.
Home-grown mismanagement
The current administration has piled up debt at an astonishing rate through blending home-grown mismanagement with an international economic crisis. The JDX default has been squandered and we don't get a second bite of that apple. The rest is well known: surging unemployment and poverty, underperforming revenue streams, more difficulty doing business, and an economy so 'stable', it's like a patient flatlining on the hospital bed, or the yard fowl discussed earlier.
Critics have been crying out. In response to this, Minister of Finance and Tracing Audley Shaw has asked the political ombudsman to turn his attention to certain "irresponsible statements" and "mischievous" comments that "seek to destabilise the economy and destroy investor confidence".
The complaint is difficult to fathom unless questions outside Parliament are more likely to cause instability than questions inside it. For unanswered questions before Parliament ask if Government failed to meet any IMF targets, what those targets were, and why they failed. These simple inquiries are ignored, while Mr Shaw keeps Bishop Blair busy, most recently with inflammatory accusations that earned him The Gleaner's censure and, according to reports, a lawsuit. The newspaper has requested a public reprimand from PM Holness. Will Holness comply?
Not likely. Mr Holness is himself busy developing the theme that foreign investors demand him alone, and that important investments are based upon him returning to power. In Mandeville, he said, "I worry, because the financial markets and investors have already (said)
Suspect divestments
These remarkable statements, supposedly based on the S&P review, have caused barely a murmur. Compare that to the mighty uproar when Mrs Simpson Miller said she would review suspect divestments. Funnily enough, the reasons given for the 'negative' S&P assessment were Government's failure to carry out the pension and tax reform, and divestments it had promised to the IMF. So a complaint about Government's failure and incompetence has evolved in our prime minister's mouth into its very opposite: an endorsement. I call this 'continuity' with Golding's approach to the truth. De worl' nuh level, but it's entertaining.
Perhaps Messrs Holness and Shaw will at some point just take the next logical step and declare discussion of their economic failures treasonous. For according to the logic behind the complaint to Bishop Blair, it's questions that are causing problems, not the poverty and unemployment. I suppose it's naturally tempting to shoot the bearers of bad news about your economic management or the critics of your incendiary language. But don't shoot the critics, and for God's sake, don't 'shoot' the bishop! Just like Housing and Environment, Finance and Tracing don't sit well together.
My suggestion is that prior to the upcoming election, rather than just the glitzy manifestos, the electorate has all aspirants answer specific and detailed questions about their plans by putting it into a proposed budget for scrutiny. Shadow Finance Minister Peter Phillips can give his vision. The National Democratic Movement and United People's Party might take the opportunity to become organisations serious and sophisticated enough to present budgets.
Meanwhile, a pre-debate budget should be absolutely no problem for Mr Shaw, since in-between bouts of tracing, he absentmindedly presents a different annual budget every three months or so regardless.
Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York, and currently qualifying for the Jamaican Bar. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.