The Tribune

By INIGO 'NAUGHTY' ZENICAZELAYA

After two years and two months, our Prime Minister has finally delivered a thorough accounting in response to the question of the decade, ‘Where da VAT money gone?’

Well, sort of.

Okay, not really.

What we did get, however, is a mild dressing down from His Imperial Highness, a single page website (aka VAT for Dummies) and (if you’re like me) a sad feeling in the pit of the stomach.

The Devil is in the details

I was excited - really excited - when Perry Christie began his address in Parliament this week to explain how the lucrative and elusive Value-Added Tax (VAT) money had been spent. After promising a detailed accounting of the billion dollars plus taken in by the government, I pulled out my pencil, pad and calculator, ready to go to work.

Instead, Bahamians everywhere got an earful about how not one dollar of the VAT money was wasted. We (the people) were also told that anyone trying to ‘”dumb down the discussion and discourse” was basically unpatriotic. Because only a traitor would ask a simple question like, ‘Where da VAT money gone?’

So, after riddling off a few line items like the hiring of more teachers, police and defence force officers, and a long drawl about the original perception that VAT would be paid down on the debt being a “misconception”, we were directed to a website called understandingvat.org (aka VAT for Dummies).

Anxious to get to the details (though somewhat perturbed at the Prime Minister’s tone), I pulled out my iPad and tapped away only to arrive at a webpage with even less information than our PM had grudgingly given.

Alas, foiled again!

Back to the future

No doubt the PM is perturbed, maybe even angry, that Bahamians have a “misconception” of what his administration planned for VAT.

Though his recent comments on the subject seem to suggest Bahamians have the wrong idea (or no idea) about how finance works, our self-appointed Minister of Finance must have forgotten the high hopes he and his Junior Finance Minister Michael Halkitis promised back in the day.

In his New Year’s remarks in 2015, a day after VAT came into effect, the PM said, “VAT is going to expand the revenue base in a way that will enable government to better meet social and infrastructural needs of the Bahamian people.” He said, “VAT, therefore, is a necessary improvement and one that is destined, I am convinced, to bring brighter skies and clearer days for our country and its finances.”

Well, fast forward two years and all we have is a GDP-to debt ratio that is worse than ever and a series of downgrades to show for it. In other words, we’ve gone from a category 2 to a category 4 hurricane with no eye in sight.

Judging by his address in the House of Assembly, I think the PM misses the point that the very simple question of the VAT money and its whereabouts is actually representative of the many questions Bahamians have about promises his administration has made and failed to live up to.

During that same speech in 2015, the PM also said, “The prospects for economic diversification in 2015 are exceptionally promising as well. No better example of this can be found than BAMSI in Andros.”

Now I know this may sound simple, but if BAMSI, at a cost of $100 million and not much to show for it, was supposed to be our best example, what on earth is the worst?

In 2015 the PM said about crime, “it would obviously not be politic for me to go into sensitive matters in this forum. After all, we do not want to tip our hand to the criminal elements!”

I wonder, sincerely, if it would be ‘politic’ to ask if we could maybe try some’ hand-tipping’, because with a new murder record (and hundreds of senseless deaths) it appears secret measures aren’t working.

The Prime Minister also said, back in 2015, “Baha Mar - the largest of its kind in the entire region - will come on stream, beginning at the end of March. This is going to create no fewer than 5,000 jobs for thousands of Bahamians.”

I know it may sound ‘dumb’ for me to suggest that a leader who cannot foresee the collapse of a major project (built mostly under his watch) then only six months away probably doesn’t make the best fortune teller. So, all I’ll say is Nostradamus is probably spinning in his grave right now.

I’m reliving these past predictions by Prime Minister Christie only to point out that many of the big ‘promises’ made in the past (both implicit and explicit) have not yet come to fruition. The insatiable thirst for information and details about how our VAT money is being ‘consolidated’ and disbursed is a function of that thirst. And I’m sorry, you’ll have to do better than a basic website with a vague 30/40/30 breakdown on general expenses (aka the website VAT for Dummies) to quench it.

By the way, do you remember when Prime Minister Christie, during his 2013/2014 budget communication, said “$1m will be spent on developing a ‘Mardi Gras’ style cultural festival for the Bahamas to take place each Lent”?

Me too.

Too bad that never happened. A big-time festival for only a million dollars sounded so promising. I wonder what predictions (and dreams) our leader has to offer this go around?

• Inigo ‘Naughty’ Zenicazelaya is the resident stand-up comic at Jokers Wild Comedy Club at the Atlantis, Paradise Island, resort and presents ‘Mischief and Mayhem in da AM’ from 6am to 10am, Monday to Friday, and ‘The Press Box’ sports talk show on Sunday from 10am to 1pm on KISS FM 96.1. He also writes a sports column in The Tribune on Tuesday. Comments and questions to naughty@tribunemedia.net