Dawn Ritch, Contributor
I HAVE borne it long enough.
The silence of Edward Seaga, Opposition Leader on the subject of the FINSAC debt. Not the individual sum owed by his company but the debt in its entirety, other people's included.
It's entirely out of his control, out of everybody else's, and out of the Government's.
It's under the control of Beal Bank now, thanks to the "creative" financial management of Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance.
So, at least, I will no longer hear the disgraceful taunts from the Government benches of leading JLP MPs every time there's an important sitting in the House of Representatives, with Audley Shaw exposing Government incompetence or corruption.
Hopefully, therefore, the Opposition Leader will at last wake up to the recognition that the howling horror of his own individual indebtness was systemic.
Not only is everybody else's boat leaking, but many have long abandoned ship, or were persecuted into exile or suicide.
The very pillars of society remaining in Jamaica are rotting, there's nothing Seaga can lean on but himself. At 72 years of age.
A politician elects above all to ignore his own suffering in favour of the suffering of others. It is a hard row to hoe, hard on the financial security of political families and their interests.
I would never do it, most people never do, but some brave souls in every generation commit to doing it for a lifetime. And a grateful nation should thank them for entering the thankless field of representational politics.
By a quirk of fate, ownership of property and bad PNP Government policies and misrule, Mr. Seaga finds his company burdened by huge debt.
He said several years ago that he forgot a loan at Century National Bank, and has been silent on the subject of the collapse of the domestic financial sector ever since.
A sense of personal guilt has silenced him as though the instrument of the economic devastation of the island of Jamaica, otherwise known as FINSAC, were his own creation.
Now that not only his, but the whole island's stock of private debt has been sold to Beal Bank, the padlocks must fall from his lips.
The Government of Jamaica has completed the devastation of the local entrepreneurial sector and the fire sale of the best and most profitable service sector in Jamaica to foreigners.
I am, therefore, glad that Jamaican-born Michael Lee Shim, now based in Canada, bought National Commercial Bank very recently.
Because the once vibrant domestic financial sector no longer exists, and little Barbados and Trinidad now own and control the life insurance business, while the banking business is under the control of Canadian financial groups.
The Government has succinctly demonstrated that Jamaicans can't run financial groups, and they don't know how to collect debt either.
What clear and utter nonsense. As though this Government in its insufferable arrogance can invent something better than the traditional banker/customer relationship it found in Jamaica 13 years ago.
Any similar offer
Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance, has sold the FINSAC debt to Beal Bank, a bank we are told comes out of Texas, USA.
All that Beal Bank paid down was US$23 million on assets of US$393 million, or six cents on the dollar for the J$19 billion transaction.
Was a similar blanket reduction across the board offered to FINSAC debtors, all beleaguered and financially persecuted citizens of Jamaica?
Can the Finance Minister deny that only some of those who applied directly to him received any debt reduction, or debt forgiveness?
I call upon him to make public the criteria he used, so that he does not forever stand accused of the most manipulative and deliberate abuse of colossal power, vested in his mortal hands.
The whole nation heard the disgusting and routine taunts levelled against Seaga and Shaw in the House of Representatives about their FINSAC debts by Dr. Davies in particular, and other PNP members in recent years.
In taunting the country's Opposition, however, they mock the Jamaican people themselves. Not only Seaga's company's debt did they sell for six cents in the dollar, but everybody else's as well.
Because of the PNP Government's policies and misrule, Jamaica has been turned into a Society of Debtors.
Not even the young will be exempted since they will face the prospect of repaying the colossal national debt that Dr. Davies himself has incurred.
They are unable, however, to help their parents who are in debt because they have no job prospects. The ship of state can be expected therefore to continue to flounder as productive enterprise becomes impossible because Jamaicans are shut out from strategic industries in their own country.
It is time, therefore, for Mr. Seaga to ask who introduced Beal Bank to Jamaica.
If Beal Bank is a proper bank it will have filed reports to the U.S. Federal Reserve and other U.S. banking authorities. These reports should disclose payments to individuals, companies, commissions, who is on board and who are their advisors.
And I'd also like to know who will get work at Beal Bank in Jamaica, because if Netserv is any example, this new "expertise" that we've imported will be a much bigger nightmare.
I believe it was a tragic mistake to sell the private debt stock to foreigners who have paid six cents on the dollar for it. But it's done, and it's gone, and the country is entitled to know all about the people who bought it.
Were any of my readers who are indebted, offered the opportunity to redeem themselves at a price of six cents on the dollar? I think any debtor would have snapped it up in a second.
This FINSAC indebtedness jumps all class and race barriers in Jamaica, save and except some PNP Members of Parliament and friends of the party.
Everybody who is in business has problems, everybody has loans, and most debtors, particularly Mr. Seaga, have been suffering silently. Percy Latouche and Oswald James must, therefore, be congratulated for taking up the fight for the public in a class action suit on behalf of FINSAC debtors. They'd be a lot stronger with the Leader of her Majesty's Loyal Opposition standing at their side.
The PNP Government has taken away the best and most profitable service sector from Jamaicans, only to give it away to foreigners. This not only has tragic consequences for the social and economic well-being of Jamaicans as a whole, but it could even be the biggest rip-off of all time.
Flying a jet
This newspaper reported on an item last Wednesday in the Auditor General's annual report for the financial year ended March 2001 and tabled in Parliament last month.
It said that the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has been asked to explain why about US$320,065 of the net proceeds of the sale of an aircraft "has not been paid over by the agent to the Consulate in Miami".
This query raises all sorts of troubling questions for this Government. Particularly since Mr. Strachan said that in 1998, Cabinet approved the sale of the aircraft owned by the JDF, which came under the purview of the then Ministry of National Security and Justice.
Is it that somebody somewhere is flying a jet, while 40 per cent of the police fleet is down for want of gasolene?
Mr. Seaga, come out of your shell and break down their doors!
