FOR A long time now there has been much argument concerning the publication of FINSAC's indebtedness.

This disclosure has gotten nowhere, partly because FINSAC has been using assorted legalities to go round and round the mulberry bush. But the main reason, of course, is that the Government does not want disclosure of debts for the political reason that disclosure would in many cases be considered politically unpopular.

The prime reason given by FINSAC has been that the law pertaining to bank-customer confidentiality prevents disclosing the information to the public. This is largely eye-wash. FINSAC has admitted that while the Banking Act does not govern its operations, since FINSAC is not licensed under the Banking Act, the common law is relevant to the discussion.

What is however relevant is that FINSAC bears little relation to banking considerations for the good reason that the entire indebtedness to FINSAC has been incurred not as a private agreement with banking customers, but that the whole structure has been imposed upon the country by compulsion. FINSAC continues to insist that its relationship with its customers is a matter of law not politics, but in point a fact the FINSAC situation amounts exclusively to a political act. The entire relationship between FINSAC, and the community is a political one based upon certain political positions taken by the Government.

I take the view therefore that what was created by politics can be altered by politics. We can argue about the law until the cows come home, but the present position is that the moment that decision in this particular case was made, that the decision could and should be altered for political reasons. FINSAC was the creature of politics from the beginning. While FINSAC's entire indebtedness has been created for political reasons, it is absurd to hide public disclosure on the grounds that legal reasons cannot be permitted.

AN OLD TIME BUSINESS

My colleague C. Roy Reynolds, in his column of March 14, writes about "Wash-out, the forgotten medicine". Many years ago in Jamaica people regularly purged themselves during what they called the monthly wash-out, which usually took place on a Sunday.

The fashionable purgative then was a drug called calomel (protochloride of Mercury). Because this medicine was rather toxic, it had to be followed by a massive dose of Epsom salts. In England, however, the fashion in purging was rather different. In the early part of the century, a famous surgeon, Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, declared that the colon was the seat of all health problems, and that waste matter in the colon led to an illness called auto-intoxication. The good surgeon was slightly nuts on the subject, and surgically removed people's colons whenever he had the opportunity to do so. When, however, his patients rebelled as they often did, he prescribed instead large dose of mineral oil.

In one way or another, therefore, either in Jamaica or in England, people were mightily purged. Fortunately for me, my old and much loved nanny Elizabeth Selvyn never allowed me to be dosed in this way, and the only purgative that was ever inflicted upon me (with one very rare exception) was an occasional dose of castor oil, used, I think more as a punishment than as a purge. There was also a mild medicine called cascara. Fortunately for all concerned, the ritual of the "wash-out" was abandoned more or less.