Duplicity, Double Speak & Doubles...

Speaking during the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) annual post-budget breakfast meeting, Finance Minister Larry Howai said that once negotiations with CLICO policyholders and shareholders are complete, the government will move to consider all its options to recoup the nearly $20 billion of taxpayers' money it spent to save the failed insurance giant.

Read that again, this time slowly so as to understand exactly what is being said and more importantly what is not being said in that statement:

'The government will 'move' to consider' – meaning for all right intents and purposes that the government has not yet actually begun the act of considering but intends to at some future and more fortuitous time, so not really a promise but more of an idea or an item on a wish list. See how that works? This is followed by 'all its options,' suggesting that there are many ways in which this issue can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion when in truth and in fact, as none of the principals have been arrested or charged or even brought in for questioning at this point it is more likely safe to assume that nothing of substance will ever be done about this, and that quite possibly, the greatest daylight robbery ever executed in the history of this country has succeeded. What would prompt the newly minted 'ten million dollar man' to engage in such duplicitous behavior so early in his career as Finance Minister? Could it be that, handed this script to read he actually believes the words that are coming out of his mouth?

As a fully formed cynic where government pronouncements are concerned I see this entire performance as a red herring in a virtual school of red herrings designed to distract the people and throw them off the scent and Larry Howai ought to be ashamed for joining in on this perversion. The real truth is that twenty thousand millions of the people's dollars has been misappropriated by government to cover the tracks of thieves and, to put this shameful act into perspective I thought we could look at what twenty billion dollars could have bought us.

- With a housing shortfall of ten thousand houses or thereabouts, at five hundred thousand dollars for a very nice three bedroom house, five billion of the twenty stolen would have paid for all ten thousand in cash, leaving fifteen billion dollars in change.

- Using the 100 bed Scarborough hospital at five hundred million as a guide (corruption and theft included and accounted for), and based on providing a further thousand beds to our stock, we could have built ten more hospitals for five billion dollars, leaving us roughly another ten billion in change.

- Schools; we seem to always need more schools and at a conservative one hundred million per school we could have built fifty new schools and discarded those in need of repair, leaving us with roughly five billion with which, based on the government's admitted spend of fifty million for the Independence weekend of freeness and festivities, we could have had two years of straight exuberant alcohol soaked indulgence complete with Machel Montano and Kes. Ridiculous? Sure, but no more ridiculous than letting those who looted the treasury abscond with the proceeds while twenty five per cent of our population live below the poverty line, not so?

Until Anand Ramlogan is made to account for his role in the planning and execution of the Section 34 fiasco, until Austin Jack Warner is fired form the Cabinet for, among many other sins, using his office to publicly threaten a journalist, freedom of the press and speech at one go, until Ish & Steve are on their way to the US to face the music, and until Calder Hart, Lawrence Duprey and all of the other highly skilled criminal minds who have looted this country are dragged back in chains this will not be a real country. This is Trinidad & Tobago, a place where it is easier to get distracted and show moral outrage and indignation over a fight by a doubles box than it is to say right, that's it, enough. Want slight pepper with that?