I really did not think that we in the Turks and Caicos Islands could possibly be back in the dark ages when the king could make a decree without consulting his people and that became the law of the land.

With Governor Ric Todd, we seem to have reached that backward point once again in our country. How in heaven’s name can this man think that he could just say that he is doing something in our best interest and do it without even our “say so”?

There must be a fixation with the number $10M by these guys. First of all, the Turks and Caicos Investment Agency (TC Invest) has to be closed because of the potential for Government to have a $10M liability on its hands and then there is the owing of Government by NIB of $10M for injury related expenses; so they say!

 We all know that when the scheme was first started in 1992, there were not that many persons employed in areas that could create job related injuries. As the population increased over time, and the construction boom took place, there were some injuries.

No one in the health care services billed NIB for such costs over the period. It was not until we started working on the hospitals project, and needed to have data on the utilization of the various clinical services, that we were able to separate out the data in some systematic form, and this gave rise to our ability to separate out what costs would have been as a result of work related injuries and would per force rightly had to be reimbursed to government by NIB.

Once it was decided that a reimbursement would be applied for, discussions between government and NIB took place, and an agreed amount was paid to government, the bulk of which was offset against what government owed NIB for non-payment of rents and contributions for and on behalf of the government employees. The first tranche was paid in 2009 and a subsequent one thereafter.

 Now, when former chief Financial Officer Caroline Gardiner left these shores last year, she had pronounced that the budget was seriously tending towards balance, and was on track to be balanced in 2012-2013, which would be this upcoming financial year.

However, because they made the decision to pay SIPT and Civil Recovery from recurrent budget and not as was previously said, by HMG, they found themselves in a bind as to how they would balance the budget.

So the new CFO Hugh MgGarel-Groves comes in with this $30M deficit first of all, they revised and extended that subsequently. They had to find $10M from somewhere to plug in the deficit hole, because even with the raising of taxes, they were not going to meet the targets as projected.

 What they have not understood here in Turks and Caicos Islands is that our economy thrives on inward investments. They have not, since their arrival, and the closing down of all of the major on-going projects, replaced them with anything. Therefore, the amount of money in circulation just has been drying up. People have been holding on to their wallets in every way possible and spending money on the bare essentials, and cutting back on them too.

These people came to the Turks and Caicos Islands with the mindset that there was a pot of gold hidden somewhere here and they intended to find and milk it. This started by Colin Roberts from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office saying that he would not agree to the spending of any of the British tax payers’ money to bring some semblance of stability to Turks and Caicos Islands Government.

This was in the face of countries world-wide, having to borrow money to prop up their economies until the world situation turned around. They refused to allow us to borrow money to embark on policy-based infrastructure developments that would have primed the pump of the economy and ensure that we came out of the crisis quickly.

So with the uncertainty looming, persons left the country and the economic base shrunk. So unless and until there is a concerted effort to boost investor confidence and encourage inward investments, we will continue down the slippery slope of revenue reductions. No amount of raising taxes will fix the situation. People will hoard and cut back. There is no real expectation that you can collect taxes if there is no money.

So Governor Todd finds himself in a quandary with respect to money and so he began to try and bully NIB to pony up money for things for which there are no verifiable bill. NIB money is our money.

The Board is supposed to protect our nest egg until such time as we, the senior citizens, required that money to be paid to us as our pension, resulting from our contribution over the years! It is totally disingenuous on the part of Governor Todd, to now say, first of all, that government is owed money, when neither he, nor he, in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance provide the Board with any verifiable bills.

This man just came here yesterday afternoon! How can he be such an expert in our financial matters, when the persons who have been responsible for the data know of no such bills? This is the greatest “snatch and grab” operation since the days of Captain Morgan!

This man really thinks that he is still in the spy business! There, he could be a pathological falsifier of voracity and all would be fair game. He is supposed to be running a country and has to be transparent.

He knows full well that there were not six meetings with the Board of NIB to discuss the issue. He knows too that the only discussions at the Forum was mainly by chance, and that the Chairman of NIB on hearing some oblique reference to the matter requested of the Chair of the Forum to speak there, and that is how the public got some inkling as to what was really going on!

I have not to this day seen any public support for Todd’s position in any newspaper in this country or any other part of the media. So when he goes on WIV TV and says such things, he is trying to spit in our faces and expect us to call it small rain! Man get real we are every day seeing through that façade that you are putting up. That smoke screen is not going to work on us this time!

If what he were doing were right and justifiable, do you really think that he would have to create fresh legislation to do what he is doing, that is financing a hair-brain scheme with our money?

As has been proven by a Court case brought by NIB, when the then AG gave a written opinion that they could not lend money, the Court upheld the Board’s position! So if the Governor wanted to borrow the $10M from NIB, once a creditable proposal was made, they would have been lent the money. But that was never the governor’s intent. He just wasted access to our money without the need to account for it. Not only that, he wants our Pension money and does not want to pay it back or really tell us what he wants it for. The totally sad part of this is that he has already passed the legislation by himself without it being debated in one of the organs that has been set up by his kit and kin.

Had any elected government attempted to engage in such activity, everyone, including Todd and the British would have been screaming their heads off about the lack of transparency and the total employment of corrupt practices!

So there is one yardstick for the infidels taking of our money and another if there is the smallest semblance of something like that by Turks and Caicos Islanders. I have said it before, and now more of us are coming to realize that these people mean us no good.

All of their plans are designed to bring us all to our knees financially, take the political rod from our hands, make us a totally bankrupt country and then hand it back to us and say “you deal with the mess that we have created in your best interest”. They will then brush their donkeys and leave us adrift in the greatest morass that we could ever imagine!

But as many would say, “the devil is a liar”! We have to rid ourselves of the leach that is sucking our blood, while we still have some strength! If we continue to lay back, when we decide some time down the road to do something, the road would be too hard to hoe! So let us get our acts together. I have been seeing signs of a turnaround. The Governor is reading the same tea leaves. Why else do you think he has started his campaign, but not to create an aura of something positive being done, when in truth and in fact, it is nothing more than a charade to lull you to sleep? 

·      Royal Robinson was a former Deputy Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Minister of Finance and Health under the Progressive National Party (PNP) Administration.