Wednesday 27th February 2008

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

The research shows that it was Mark Twain the nineteenth century American writer who popularized an expression attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister: lies, damned lies and statistics.  That has to be the starting point of any exposition today with regard to this so called mid year budget statement: lies, damned lies and statistics.

The government in its statement sought to use poetry to delude us into thinking this is a real exercise, quoting Shakespeare: “Mine honour is my life; both grow in me/Take honour from me, and my life is done.”  Fair enough for we are all honourable men.

Nothing but idle poetry.  But Mr. Speaker, I have lots of poetry of my own, lines and bits and pieces that can help us through this debate to the Government.

How about the line from the movie the Lion In Winter: ‘You’re so deceitful you can’t ask for water when you’re thirsty.’

Or what about this line from the same movie: ‘We could tangle spiders in the webs you weave.’

How about this one from the same movie: ‘Oh how I love being king.’

Or more recently an expression from a king of another kind when the former U.S. President explained away his behavior by saying “because I could”.

Or from Sir Walter Scott: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Or since the government called in aid Shakespeare, how about: “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Or from the pop group Imagination: “Could it be that it’s just an illusion putting me back in all this confusion?”

Poetry has its uses indeed.  And I prefer on this occasion a bit of poetry from the Psalms of the Bible: ‘We spend our years as a tale that is told.’

And today I would like to tell a tale or two about this statement and expose it for what it is an illusion, the use of statistics and clever language to confuse.

It is the continuation of the same kind of gotcha politics that we have criticized since this Parliament began.

Our budget Mr. Speaker for this country is about 1.2 billion US dollars.  I remember talking to a Senior Vice President for one of the cruise lines that call on Bahamian ports and he told me that he had just made a decision to order two ships which would cost his company 500 million dollars US each.  That is one senior vice president of a not so large company in the U.S. ordering a billion dollars worth of ships.

I often recall that the size of the school board’s budget in New York city is over 8 billion US dollars.

Against that background the question must be asked about the utility of this budget planning, debating and discussing.  If the truth be told, it appears that government of The Bahamas has spent its time not on productive activity but on budget activity: checking the books to find fault with the PLP, canceling contracts and re-launching programmes, nothing new, just going over old history.  Totally non productive.  I dare say that if someone did a cost benefit analysis of this exercise, the value of the time and labour in proportion to the actual productivity that it brings, we would see that too much time and labour and therefore money is being spent on an exercise that brings us very little productivity.

The civil service even now must be engaging in preparing the budget for the country for fiscal year 2008/09, and here we are still debating the current year.  We are now engaged in the third budget debate since the eight months of this physical year, in the ten months that this administration has been in power.  The country is entitled to ask them when they are going to do something productive.

For example, if the Ministry of Finance is interested in reform, if the public service is interested in reform why can’t they devise a system where people who retire from the public service can get their gratuities and pension cheques within 30 days after they retire.  That I would consider productive.  The standard time is now more like nine months after someone retires, even though the service let’s you know one year in advance that your time is up in the service.

I read today where the President of the Bahamas Public Services Union John Pinder made the point that it is all well and good to pay the gratuities of those 179 deceased public servants, but what is the point he argues when a probate in the courts of the estates of these individuals routinely takes 18 months.  How about the Ministry of Finance, the public service and the Courts doing something about that.

In fact, the easy solution might be for the public service to be able to pay a gratuity to named beneficiary, like insurances.  So that every public servant will be required to name a beneficiary during their employment.  Of course, if the estate is the beneficiary you will still have to do a probate so why not find a way to speed up probates.  And I see where the courts are saying that we must not blame them for crime but certainly the courts must tell us why it routinely takes 18 months to probate someone’s estate.

This may be a convenient time to deal with the allocation of two million dollars for 179 deceased public servants.  We certainly support this but this surely was something that had to have been known in May 2007 when the Budget was read for the 2007/08 cycle and surely this figure could be dealt with by way of a contingency warrant.

I also want to add a word of caution.  This side hears what you say about openness and transparency but sometimes you can take things too far.  The government plans to announce the names of the estates to which these monies are to go so the families can come and collect.  But it occurs to us that in advertising the fact that people may be getting large sums of money, is the government laying these people open to robbery because people think that they have large amounts of cash coming to them or in their possession.  These are not the times of thirty years ago, and the government should proceed with some caution in this matter.

We tried to warn the government during the last debates on the supplementaries and during the budget debate itself, not to let Ministry of Finance officials drive politicians to do foolishness, calling it or misnaming it public sector reform.

How can there be reform when in that very department there is no succession planning? The same officials that advised the late Sir Lynden Pindling are still advising the present Minister of Finance.

In the briefing of our parliamentary caucus, we were informed that this idea brought by the Minister of Finance is not new; that the officials tried to get us to do this last year but our judgment was that the data that it would provide is easily obtainable and available in the Central Bank quarterly reports.  But further that we had an urgent social agenda, decisions to make on investments in which the time spent would actually add to the productivity in the country and give the country greater utilization for its parliamentary time.  And now the idea of a midyear statement has come back as if it is some revolutionary idea.

Mid year budget statements are not revolutionary, and when other members from this side speak, hopefully the country will see all this is really is a way by sleight of hand to get some contingency warrants for expenditure that were not properly anticipated, through without calling it that.  The very same thing this government criticized the PLP for doing just last year, that is not anticipating all the expenditure and under budgeting.  We were told all of that would stop when the new dispensation came to power.

Further, the Brits do an autumn statement by the Chancellor, and he uses it as a means of reporting on the state of the country’s finances, and the need for any additional revenue or expenditure measures.

Mr. Speaker, this Parliament has a new set of rules, and when we were putting the rules together, there was not the support there for the Committee system that exists in Canada and the UK which would see these matters go before the finance committee of the Parliament and be examined before they actually come to the floor of the House. The public officials would be questioned about the budget and its expenditure.  There would then be very little need for members to all pile on in this debate.

A word about these rules. I have heard it said more than once that these rules were designed to prevent the Member for North Abaco from speaking in this place.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I do not think that the Member for North Abaco figured not even once in the meetings by this committee to redo the rules.  The whole object of changing the rules was to give more efficacy and efficiency to Parliamentary time, not to stop any particularly member.  I thought the assertion by that member was sheer cheek, an example of egotism at it best, as if the whole world revolves around one person.  Almost as laughable as the notion that the use of podiums in this place became popular when that member started to use them.  Sheesh!

The new rules were signed by all members of the committee including two members now in the government: the honourable member for Lucaya and the member for St. Anne’s. There was no dissenting voice.  I would add also that we on this side consider the interpretation that a winding up speaker has no limit to his speaking is a perverse interpretation of the rules and is certainly in violation of the purpose and spirit of the rules.

Mr. Speaker, let us look at some of the language in this statement: “the most recent economic data suggests that construction activity moderated during 2007 in both residential and commercial investments.”

What poetry, idle poetry.  Moderated?  What precisely does moderated mean?  Does it mean what the president of the contractor association Timothy Wrinkle told the press that 60 per cent of the contractors are out of work?  Is that what moderated means?  Does it mean what the President of the Chamber of Commerce Dionisio D’Aguilar said when he said that 70 per cent of the contractors are out of work. Is that what moderated means?

This kind of Ministry of Finance speak is not truthful, and it is deceptive.  I’ll tell you what it really means.  It means that the young men are out of work. They sit on the walls of my constituency every day searching for work, and their bosses in the construction industry are out of work.

And we are not surprised.  We told you so:  You cannot as a government extract 90 million dollars out of the economy, you know stop, review and cancel, and then not have an impact on the construction industry.  Then you come in here like you did last week, to claim credit for investments that you had nothing to do with, that you cursed while you were in opposition but which you are trying desperately to get started because you realize that construction has to use your word “moderated” over the last year.

Let’s go to another quote:

“It will be noted that 19 million or 48 per cent of the total 40 million dollars in supplementary capital expenditure represents additional transfers to deficit generating public sector entities.  Thus we are obliged to scale back on other projects to accommodate the demands of these entities.  This mans that many priority projects may be denied resources because additional funds must be advanced to the loss making entities.  This is an unsustainable situation which must be addressed.”

Now I wasn’t here for the delivery of this statement but I am told that at that point the Member for North Abaco had to comment on the fact that the Member for Centreville and Farm Road was smiling.  And he had to smile because you remember the bombast with which the Member for North Abaco blasted the PLP from his seat last year when he told the Leader of Opposition business that ZNS would not get a penny more from the government.  But here it is they are going to get $480,000 of the public money.

And Bahamasair which we may as well admit is part of the necessary national infrastructure like roads and parks will get another 11 million.  At the time of the government’s budget statement they admitted that they were under budgeting the amount for Bahamasair.  But now the piper has come to be paid for his tune and the money is now due.  So rather than shall we say it go by way of contingency and have Parliament approve it more efficiently at budget time, we have to go through this exercise.

Mr. Speaker:
The Bahamas has initialed the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.  This brings to an end to the era of one way trade preferences and makes our country and the region compliant with the World Trade Organization rules.  We supported the signing of the EPA to protect our trade with Europe of the 60 million dollars of annual crawfish exports.

But the new terms of trade agreement will mean significant and profound changes for the way the country will do business in the future.  The FNM almost jeopardized that fishing trade by their laziness and inability to comprehend its importance until forced by us to look at the matter again.

The Minister of State responsible for the policy Zhivargo Laing wrote a book espousing Free Trade called “Who Moved My Conch?”

He then came to office and immediately repudiated the words in his own book.  Now he and the FNM have had to eat their words and it is up to them to explain fully what this new agreement means.

No soft soaping must be done to hide the true and significant impact on modernizing our trade practices, integrating our economy into the world economy, the access to our markets in goods services and to the way we do business.  They must tell the truth.  They cannot seek to have it both ways, as they are trying now in relations with our Caricom neighbours.  They must tell the nation how the EPA means that what we have given to Europe must be offered to the Caribbean.

Mr. Speaker, having regard to the fact that there is so much missing from the public service vote there are legitimate questions that have to be asked about what is missing.

When I spoke last here, I talked about the housing situation in my constituency.  I remember Mr. Speaker in the old days in this Parliament if a member of the House spoke about a matter of urgent and grave importance in his constituency, the Minister responsible would immediately have his department investigate the matter without more ado.  Since I spoke here, nothing has been done to aid that housing situation in Fox Hill. Not one thing.  No investigation, no follow up.  Nothing.

But nevertheless, I wish to raise several matters in connection with the public service:

When will the government pay the air traffic controllers their certification allowance amounting to $10,000 additional per year that Parliament approved the monies for last December?

When will the 8 prison officers who were unlawfully denied their pensions when the FNM was last in Office be paid their monies?  So far the government is refusing to honour the Cabinet conclusion by the PLP and pay these people what is owed to them.

When will the Road Traffic officers who brought a case against the government and which case we agreed to settle and many of whom we agreed in some cases to rehire into the service be paid and/or rehired?  The FNM is refusing to carry out that Cabinet conclusion.

When will government regularize the promotions that were unlawfully stripped from prison officers?  The FNM is refusing to honour the lawful decisions of the Public Service Commission and despite promises in this place nothing has been done to correct the situation.

Will the government say when Charles Rolle, Deputy Superintendent of the Prison, will be confirmed in  this rank, a rank in which he was been acting for 12 years?

Does the government intend to carry out the conclusion of the National Security Council and the Cabinet to retire at his request a Defence Force officer seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a rank suitable to his years of seniority and transfer him to the public service at the level of Under Secretary?  Is the government refusing to carry out this Cabinet conclusion?

They pretend they can’t find the conclusions.  When that doesn’t work they become bloody minded.  The last comment on this matter the Minister responsible in his preemptory way said: “We will do it in our own time not in the PLP's time.”  For all his sakes one hopes that time does not run out on the public service minister before he has a chance to do the right thing.  Pleasant Bridgewater always says: “It is never too late to do the right thing.”

Will the minister responsible for the public service confirm that there is now a moratorium on general service wide promotions?  Social workers have been advised that their promotions are on hold indefinitely and this is causing a morale issue in the department.

Will the public service minister confirm that the immigration and customs officers are included in the health insurance package recently announced for the police which is the subject of an amendment to the industrial agreement with the Bahamas Public services Union?

Mr. Speaker:

The greater utility in parliamentary time would be in carrying out the social agenda to get this country back on track.

The commentary from my five cents:
Lack of articulation and the no. of alcoholics around our streets.  But all no matter how inelegantly concluded that Nassau is a filthy dirty, smelly city, and that the straw market needs to be rebuilt.  Rather than us spending parliamentary time on this, we need to get to work doing something productive.  The city is dead past East Street.  That came as a result of the decision to change the traffic flow and remove parking from that part of Bay Street.  There are empty buildings all along the way.

So Mr. Speaker as I conclude let me cut to the chase, cut through the cow dung so to speak, the idle poetry, all this talk of moderating construction activity.  The truth, nothing but the truth.  The unvarnished facts.  This is what the government’s midyear budget statement really says:

The revenue is down and underperforming and we don’t expect that there will be any change in this given what is happening in the U.S. economy.

Unemployment is up and we expect it to continue to rise having regard to the moderating of the construction industry and the downturn in tourism.

The housing programme by the government is non existent and don’t look for any relief soon.

The government will have to borrow more money to keep themselves afloat.

Welcome to the real world.

Could it be that it’s just an illusion, putting me back in all this confusion.

Lies, damned lies and statistics!