NO POLITICAL CAPITAL TO BE GAINED

Aug 17, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

How did the Ministry of Public Health know that the facility at Sussex Street was available for rental, when they were looking for additional storage place to store medicines?
Did Cabinet ask about this when it approved the deposit of $25M for the bond? Did Cabinet not question, before it gave its approval, what was the rental for the facility going to be and whether spending this humongous sum was worth it given that government could have bought its own building and equipped it to store drugs for the same or even less that sum?
Why spend one hundred and fifty million dollars per years on rental when you can buy two or three properties for that sum?
The manner in which this deal has been handled by the government leaves much to be desired. The investigators from the cabinet were given a mere two days to complete their job. It would be impossible to get to the bottom of this deal in such short time.
The government tried a typical political trick by attempting to deflect the blame for the fiasco towards the People’s Progressive Party, saying that it was trying to distance itself from the sole sourcing of the PPPC. Well what a way to distance oneself from the PPPC!
The PPPC has nothing to do with this deal. The standards of the PPPC cannot be the benchmark by which the government should assess itself. In any event, the PPPC, for all the criticisms which can be made of it, would not have made such a horrendous deal.
The question is where we go from here. The government will no doubt remain silent on the issue. It will allow the storm to pass. This, too, is very much like how the PPPC dealt with controversies. It stayed quiet, because it knew that within two months, people would forget.
The PPPC was in power a long time. It could afford that tactic of allowing the storms to pass by. The APNU+AFC cannot afford to do that because it is a young government. As a young government, its supporters would still be harbouring high hopes for the government and expecting certain standards. They felt betrayed over the trip to China and now they feel more betrayed. When people feel betrayed, they do not forget things that easily. They take decisions about their relationship with those who betrayed them.
As much as the supporters of APNU+AFC do not wish to see the PPPC gain any political capital from what has happened, they are not going to forget the embarrassment and shame that the bond deal has brought to them.
The government therefore can continue to fool itself into believing that if it simply closes ranks and stays quiet that the worst will pass and all will be forgotten. It will not be. There are supporters of the government who may not be saying anything, but they are far from pleased, and some of them may even be prepared to wash their hands permanently of the new government.
The government is taking too much for granted. It is assuming that it can retain its support bases even in the midst of what is happening within the government. There have been too many scandals since the government took power, for its supporters to be sitting comfortably.
The PPPC will gain political capital, because if its questioning in the National Assembly did not unearth this deal, the transaction would have gone unnoticed. But that is the only political capital the PPPC will gain.
In so far as the supporters of APNU+AFC are concerned, they will not give any support to the PPPC on this issue. They will not change allegiances. But those who feel betrayed will not support the PPPC, but they will also not support the coalition, now or ever again.

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