What a disturbing combination of humankind; folks inside or with ‘deep ties’ in the ‘deep Cabinet’! They run Grenada! The passport- selling cabal is booming and we are learning that the pharaoh is a member! Wattttt? If that billionaire is a ‘passport seller’, one is entitled to believe that he is in full control!
Recently, the PM declared that he was a “devout Christian”, as is within his rights. However, some people were perturbed at the declaration! They said it is true that he was baptized in the RC church and has been seen fingering a chaplet, occasionally. They said he is known to attend other churches and that that is a good thing. They also said that they get confused when General Elections come around because then, he appears to be neither Catholic nor Protestant.
Some popular rituals for profit in African folklore can be quite shocking!
No man should call another’s spirituality into question as judgment is the Lord’s. However, one is entitled to be confused when a “devout Christian” elevates an ‘uncircumcised Philistine’ to the highest seat in the Senate and embraces a pharaoh whose intentions towards Grenada are not transparently pleasing to all and sundry.
The ‘uncircumcised Philistine’ has equipped himself with ‘intellectual armor’ of the Communist variety, but his humanity is barely ever demonstrated in ‘the land of the living’. One may pontificate at will in the Senate and issue a variety of pronouncements including that child molestation is immoral and wrong, which it is. But that is not to say that one may not be found to have engaged in immoral and wrongful deeds in one’s dealings with other human beings. One may have earned a living paid for by the working- class without oneself understanding the working- class ethos or having a working- class soul.
Let us break down the PM’s most recent Press Conference: the principal question facing him was whether he supports the privatization of the MBIA, regardless of who promoted the idea. When the nation puts a burning question to its PM his duty, as leader, is to answer boldly. Instead, he bold- facedly engaged in a rehearsed ‘song and dance’ about party, Cabinet and Parliament. Perhaps he thinks that we do not know how matters get to Cabinet or to Parliament. The policy process starts in the mind of a Minister. Therefore, it was bothersome not to hear a straight response from the PM that he either favours privatization or that that will not happen under his watch or, more dramatically, not over his ‘dead body’! Evidently, he chose to hide the fact that the pharaoh had raised the matter with him previously. In doing so he reinforced the perception that he supports privatizing the MBIA.
Incidentally, the pharaoh’s right to express his opinion was never in doubt or in danger of suppression.
During the Press Conference, the PM protested vehemently, that for anyone to suggest that he or his Government was being controlled by ‘the pharaoh’ was “insulting”. Perhaps so, but to whom? There is only one valid answer to that question, i.e., the Grenadian people. The same was the case when Commissioner Cheltenham found that the activities of the PM when he undertook his historic pilgrimage to St. Moritz, Switzerland, “demeaned the Office of Prime Minister”. That Office belongs to the people and they were the ones whose honour was demeaned, and integrity insulted.
Then there was the issue of the Transformation Fund. The Minister of Finance, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs alongside him, expressly stated that the “source has to be replenished” after the payment to settle the arbitral award in the WRB/GRENLEC matter. Government was meeting an obligation, not undertaking a capital investment activity. A reasonable interpretation is that the Finance Minister was implying that the money was borrowed from the NTF. Interesting! If it were a genuine capital investment project, there would be no need to “replenish the source”! Clinched! Bingo!
Obviously, the PM knew the balance in that Account after the $200 million payment and must be taken to have been kept informed regularly on the current balance of the Fund. Yet he said that he did not know how much money was in the Transformation Fund. Really? He must be told to his face that no ‘ABC’ child would believe his denial. Clearly, the reason for his non-disclosure was that he did not want people to say that there was sufficient money in the Fund to settle the teachers’ demand. Just borrow from the Fund, again and pay back in December!
The Fund is referred to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the IMF, back in 2014, expressly indicated to Government how a portion of those moneys were to be treated. While the purposes to which the Fund may be applied are stipulated in the Act, nothing prevents the Government from borrowing from the Fund to meet a pressing obligation, as in the WRB/GRENLEC case! By the way, why were they accumulating and not spending the money on important/urgent capital projects since 2018, eh? Tell us PM, who approves expenditure under the Fund? Is it Parliament or the Minister for Finance, meaning you, Sir?
There must be a good reason why that Press Conference was not the testimony of a ‘devout Christian’. The counsel of the Lord was not present there. These things tend to happen when one peddles untruths, surrounds oneself with unbelief and gives access to insatiable material greed!
Time that they gather on the banks of the Beausejour River; not to testify of their power and riches, but to pray forgiveness as all Christians do.
William Joseph, The Patriotic Vine
