PETER TURNQUEST IS TOTALLY LOST
The word incompetent keeps ringing through loud and clear. The man Peter Turnquest, who is the Minister of Finance simply has no idea what he is doing. Under his stewardship as Minister of Finance, he has borrowed a shocking 3 billion dollars in two years. He will not meet his revenue or deficit targets, that he wonderfully boasted about last year. However, he continues to double down and say what a great job he is doing.
One is reminded of that poem that reads: Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Now we know why he couldn’t keep her. He just couldn’t count.
The Minister of Finance is an expert on fudging the figures. He leads the FNM in this narrative which is that they rescued the country from the PLP’s fiscal mismanagement. Except that they have no facts to back up what they say. What we know is that they have stopped, reviewed a cancelled project after project. They have then bamboozled the contractors who are desperate for money to take a haircut on their pricing: take it or leave it. They then restart the projects and brand them as their own.
This is certainly what happened with the General Post Office. They cancelled the contract with Scott Godet that was well in play to rebuild a complete new post office. They then gave the contract to Brent Symonette, a crooked deal, involving a minister of the government. They claimed it was not corrupt but pure as the driven snow. They will have to pay millions of penalties to Mr. Godet for canceling the contract, but they did not mind that. That did not stop from boasting that they have done a good job and building a new post office. All they have done, however, is feather the nest of Brent Symonette.
In his budget statement, Mr. Turnquest claimed that he was doing something revolutionary by starting a revenue collections unit. But hang on a second, wasn’t this the same unit that the FNM under his leadership closed down when they came to power, sent the people home because they thought they were all PLPs, even though the unit was collecting millions of dollars for the government? Now they realize that they have to resurrect it, suddenly it is the greatest idea but it’s an FNM idea.
There are scores of examples of this kind of crookedness.
This year the Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest didn’t show up at the labour day parade in Freeport. Last year, he had to beg his audience to stay and listen to him, people were so fed up. This year, there were boos and jeers as Kwasi Thompson, the Minister of State, spoke on behalf of the FNM.
The FNM is in deep trouble. The PLP seems newly invigorated. What is clear also is that Peter Turnquest, the Minister of Finance is clueless, hapless and hopeless.
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday, 8th June, 2019 up to midnight: 138,516
Number of hits for the month of June up to Saturday, 8th June, 2019 up to midnight: 152,647
Number of hits for the year 2019 up to Saturday, 8th June, 2019 up to midnight: 4,327,115