…budget numbers

Winston Jordan was reintroduced into the political system as a technocratic kinda fella. You know…the back-room, number crunching faceless drudge who keeps their Ministers looking good. There was always the school of thought that in areas like finance, where you don’t need too much (any?) charisma or razzle-dazzle, maybe fellas like Jordan can take centre stage. Bumping up, rather than cutting off, the middle man – so to speak.

Well if Jordan’s the test of that theory, then it’s back to the drawing board. The man has made such a mess of the APNU/AFC 2015 budget that this Eyewitness wonders what the ***** he was doing during Jagdeo and Ashni Singh stints as Finance Minister- when he was in the back room. What he has shown is he’s straining mightily to be the Rottweiler political type – with his heavy handed put-downs and ponderous attempts at “cutting wit”. He mostly managed to cut himself!

The most egregious blunder – which got his PRIME Minister in hot water – was to not cater for the fact that his President had signed legislation mandating several agencies being funded directly from the Consolidated Funds. Now this wasn’t just for administrative or bureaucratic convenience, screamed APNU/AFC but that those agencies were “being muzzled by the hand that feeds them” and all that jazz. Apart for Nagamootoo having to grovel, hat in hand to Jagdeo to beg for “understanding” Jordan forced even supporters to wonder if, in fact, the PNC-led APNU/AFC hadn’t lost its penchant for muzzling!

But just when you think Jordan couldn’t get his foot further up his mouth, up comes Jagdeo to point out that the $23B he boasted of paying to farmers for paddy shipped COULDN’T BE FOUND IN THE ESTIMATES!!! And this wasn’t the only instance of “Case of the missing money” (Jagdeo thinks it’s “Purloined Money”!) There was a $3.8B to GuySuCo and $5B to GRDB – but these are chicken feed, no? $23B would pay for 200,000 tonnes of rice!! An entire year export to Venezuela!

What Jordan’s trying to do is to let APNU/AFC have their cake and gorge themselves on it at the same time. First they say the Treasury’s bare as well as the PetroVaribe Fund. But what Jagdeo figures they did was to transfer some numbers on the books to simply pass the $23B in the Budget as a debt to PetroCaribe.

But any self-respecting bookkeeper would know this is just financial legerdemain – trickery and conjuring of numbers out of thin air.

But thin air leads to a hard landing. As Jordan will find out soon.

…for lack of size

It’s been a running joke for decades that fellas with challenges in their trouser-equipment try to make up for it by getting bigger cars. It’s called the “compensation syndrome”. Well, it’s a theory no longer. A study in England published in the Daily Mail last year proved that the charge just wasn’t an urban legend! And as if to provide definitive evidence up comes (we use the adverb “up” figuratively) Nagamootoo with his pouting demand for a $22 million SUV!!

The Fella says he MUST have it so that he can visit “constituents”. Now can you believe this load of horse manure? Here it is, the man just told his constituents that he can’t reduce VAT (apart from Mayonnaise) or raise salaries more than 5% but to comfort them he’s be tooling around in his new, black (and of course, totally tinted) Landcruiser.

This beats Marie Antoinette telling the peasants crying for bread to “eat cake”. But we know what the guillotine did to her neck, no?

Other parts of the anatomy can ask be further decimated!!

…crimes?

Whatever happened to those 60 choir boys who strayed from the straight and narrow to filch people’s cell phones and were pardoned?

Have they actually not sinned again?