Hypocrisy?

The JLP in Opposition roundly condemned the operations of FINSAC.  The charges were that:

• State funds were being used to bail out friends of the governing PNP;
• Selective secret criteria were being utilized to punish entrepreneurs who had been favourably disposed to the JLP; and
• FINSAC properties were being sold to foreigners at a substantially discounted rate whilst FINSAC owners were neither given statement of accounts nor allowed to re-purchase the FINSAC assets at a similar rate.

The JLP in its election campaign gained substantial political capital from its unrelenting attack on FINSAC and its promise to reveal the inner workings of such a diabolical plot which had resulted in the destruction of a budding entrepreneurial class of Jamaicans.

Lo and behold, the revealed list has so far included the names of two (2) senior Ministers in the JLP Government.  Confirmation has not been forthcoming concerning the extent of the amount owed and the amount written off.

Available information is that the figures regarding the extent of the waiver/stroke/forgiveness/write-off are grossly understated.  Furthermore that more Members of Parliament - past and present - are implicated. 

Time will tell as story come to bump. The JLP cannot have it both ways:

Criticizing the diabolical nature of the scheme (blatant and vulgar misuse of state power and state funds) yet its senior members - indeed cabinet ministers are in fact beneficiaries of the said scheme.

Chief Servant Golding should demand that such offending members of his cabinet either pay back the amount waived or have the appropriate deductions made from their salaries.

Consideration should be given to having a similar measure applied to all offending JLP members of the Upper House (Senate ) and the Lower House (House of Representative).

This is not a case of cock-mouth-kill-cock. It has more to do with credibility, confidence, sincerity and trust - all of which this government is diminishing at supersonic speed.

Political integrity demands no less.