Dread I not going to get into to no nonsense with u, d moment u start talking dat SoE had no economic effect ass backwards stupidness, I realise engaging u will be an exercise in futility not worth d effort......and as for sources, d MoF has been indulging, in way too much "creative" accounting to be afforded any kinda credibility........and dat shit started early o clock wit dese people........an economist in my former department even had to forcefully refuse to "adjust" an unflattering economic projection report....... so if dey doh mind lying to deyself.......who is u....unplant yuh head from the unc's ass for a moment
I never said that, I said that it wasn't the catalyst for our economic downfall as you suggested or had a long term impact in the context of a single event. If there is one singular security event that we've never recovered from, it's the 1990 coup. Since then, crime has escalated and our police's ability to protect and serve and consistently proven to be inadequate, which has equated into increased security costs and some business uncertainty. The 2011 SOE is just one in a list of other significant security events, like the Selwyn Richardson's assassination, Cocaine and missiles in Sadiq Baksh's water tank, POS bombings in 2005 ("Mr. Big"), Kidnapping spree in 2003-2008, Abu Bakr's constant revolving court matters, Dana's assassination, etc. We also had a SOE in 1995 under Manning with the whole Occah Seepaul controversy. But I would argue each of those events individually hasn't made a significant impact (with the exception of the kidnappings because of who was targeted), but collectively then yes they have had a long term economic impact.
I'm really scratching my head how you can pretend like we suddenly became an oil and gas based economy in the last 5 years, or we suddenly have a volatile economy, or that the Central Bank/Ministry of Finance suddenly has dubious reporting. Have you been living under a rock for the past 25 years? All that shit is the same. We had double digit inflation during both the last PNM/UNC administrations that both governments did not want to officially acknowledge and report, and did everything to spin the numbers different. Every single year since I've been ever following politics, our budget statements always have murky accounting and unclear appropriations and we never get an accurate view of "Budget to Actuals" from the prior year. We have several multi-million dollar government funds (Green Fund and Heritage and Stabilization Fund come to mind) that have not had transparent reporting on either their balances or uses. We've had misuse of state funds through state corporations to fund budget expenditures, including Unit Trust deposits, Petrotrin assets, WASA, NGTT, TTMF, and others. None of this is new.
I really don't get how you can accuse me of partisan politics when I've been pretty clear I support neither, and I'm equally critical of who we had in power for the last 25 years.
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