I must ex­press my com­plete dis­ap­point­ment over the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to use tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to re­im­burse pri­vate cit­i­zens who, on their own vo­li­tion, chose risk in­stead of pru­dence when mak­ing their in­vest­ments. Those who chose the lat­ter and those who had no mon­ey to in­vest are now be­ing forced by the Gov­ern­ment to mort­gage their fu­ture and that of their chil­dren, to keep whole those who are bet­ter off fi­nan­cial­ly, many of whom have suf­fered no re­al loss of lifestyle as a re­sult of Cli­co's fail­ure. It sends the wrong sig­nal to the pub­lic by sup­port­ing avarice rather than com­mon sense.

How­ev­er, the right to plun­der the pub­lic purse hav­ing been giv­en to these spec­u­la­tors by the re­cent pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion, I call on the Gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic the names of every per­son who will ben­e­fit from this leg­is­la­tion, so that there will be full trans­paren­cy as to the dis­po­si­tion of pub­lic funds in this mat­ter. Fail­ure to do this will not on­ly be a fla­grant con­tra­dic­tion of the rul­ing PP's elec­tion promis­es, but it will con­firm sus­pi­cions that friends and sup­port­ers will be the ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this largesse.

V Blair

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