My dear Hans

What is it with all this stalking in the press? I hope you are not getting too fascinated with me! You obviously have more important things to do for the State, and in any event it might not do any good for your mental health. However, I am glad that you cared to respond to my article of October 8 and that you did not simply glance over it, as you were wont to do.{{more}} Incidentally, when I said that something was missing in the equation, it was with reference to your intervention one morning on HOT FM to a contribution, I believe, from Vynnette Frederick. You said proudly then, as if you were making the most profound statement ever, that the assets of the NCB today amounted to $813 million as opposed to 2001, when under the New Democratic Party it was about $300 million. So you have now supplied the rest of the equation, stating what the liabilities are. Without this, your contribution was stupid. You might want to ask HOT FM to give you a copy of the tape of that morning’s discussion. Obviously, since that statement you have been made aware of the existence of something called a balance sheet. You could perhaps have gone further and explained what constituted the assets of the bank. So my dear friend, thanks for realising that the equation was incomplete.

When I asked why the bank needed $100 million to divest, you easily walked into the trap that was set for you. The $100 million dollars loan you said, “…is to bring down the Government’s loans at the bank and increase the bank’s liquidity.” (By the way, there was obviously a Printer’s error so I put in the apostrophe after ‘government’). So the point is made. The Government was unable to service its loan and had to resort to borrowing $100 million from the Caribbean Development Bank to increase the bank’s liquidity. You should really have gone on to say that a pre-condition of the loan was the sale of the bank, taking it out of government’s control, or if you prefer divesting it. The issue of timing is important, and perhaps you might want to discuss this and show the genius involved in the timing of the whole exercise. So, Dear Hans, you are now giving us the information we already knew but you seem not to have known and had been denying and spinning in a way that made little sense to anyone who cared to think about it. The country in the meantime is left to pay back that loan to the Caribbean Development Bank, leaving it to our children and grandchildren to do so, all because of a government’s inability to service its loan. You seem to have difficulty calling the word ‘sale’ and prefer to say ‘divest’. It might be good for the education of all of us if you show us how under the circumstances they mean different things.

The issue of the Bank of St.Vincent and the Grenadines with controlling shares by non-Vincentians was in response to an article that appeared in the SEARCHLIGHT on Tuesday, October 5. The bank had been 100 percent owned by government and, therefore, by St.Vincent and the Grenadines. Now that control is by private interest outside of St.Vincent and the Grenadines we are highlighting the fact that it is the Bank of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. It has always been that and to the extent that it is located and operates in St.Vincent and the Grenadines, it will remain so, but the control and the decisions to ensure that control would be made outside of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. Really, I was simply tickled by the sales pitch.

Please don’t worry about my regional credentials. My relationship with regional organisations and regional work started before my employment with the University of the West Indies. Between 1986 and 1991 I was Co-ordinator of the Caribbean Peoples’ Development Agency, a regional grouping of non-governmental organisations that had over 10 member organisations in seven different Caribbean countries. Incidentally, one of our members was the Folk Research Centre of St.Lucia. Our programme was regional and decisions were made by a regional executive. I worked in all member states and have travelled to all Caribbean countries, with the exception of Montserrat and Nevis. I am at home in all of them, have delivered lectures in most of them and have interacted with people in those countries on a range of development issues.

I have no doubt that the sale is in the best interest of the Bank. Over the years the bank has suffered from government’s interference. It had reached the point today where it was being treated like a branch of the public service. The CDB must have realised this and had, therefore, attached the kind of conditions that it did. Former manager Heffner had been so disgusted with government’s interference that he walked off his job and left, we are told, the keys at the airport. Without government’s interference the bank would have been in much better financial health. The experience and strength of the Eastern Caribbean Financial Holdings would be positive factors in the bank’s future development. It was, however, quite obvious that the sale/divestment and removal of government’s control was something that had to be done at sometime but was forced on it at this particular time.

By the way, by signing Hans King, BSc Management Studies, (Upper Second Class Honours), was it your hope that it would lend credibility to what you had written and give it legitimacy? “And Yes, Press Secretary to the Prime Minister;” Dear Hans, please remember that there is life beyond being Press Secretary to a Prime Minister. If you didn’t realise this before, you probably will soon do so and you might have difficulty finding another platform from which to pontificate. Life becomes lonely then. Remember this, Dear Hans.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian.