Where is the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment get­ting an ad­di­tion­al $1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to give the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly? This from David Walk­er, a char­tered ac­coun­tant who has worked with large fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in Lon­don and oth­er world cap­i­tals. An in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ex­pert, Walk­er, who heads the San­ta Rosa Group, which was formed out of the Cli­co de­ba­cle, ar­gues that it is dif­fi­cult, if not im­pos­si­ble, to end the bud­getary deficit with­in the planned five years.

Q: Mr Walk­er, you seem to have some mis­giv­ings about the re­cent­ly an­nounced in­crease in the an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion to the THA by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

A: (In the lob­by of the Kapok Ho­tel, Thurs­day evening) It is not a mis­giv­ing. Cer­tain­ly I am hap­py for To­ba­go and my mis­giv­ing re­al­ly is the im­pact on the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

Mean­ing?

The im­pact has got to be the in­crease in ex­pen­di­ture of at least $1 bil­lion, that is, mov­ing from the cur­rent four per cent to just over six per cent. To­ba­go is go­ing to get an ad­di­tion­al $1 bil­lion, so the ques­tion has got be asked: where is the mon­ey com­ing from? Is it com­ing out of ex­ist­ing ex­pen­di­ture, which I as­sume they would have said if it was the case? So I am left to be­lieve that is go­ing to be ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture on top of any cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions.

Would that ad­verse­ly af­fect the planned end­ing of the deficit with­in the next five years?

Mr Raphael, I have al­ways had dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing how it would be achieved with­in five years and we were not giv­en any specifics ex­cept for the neb­u­lous state­ment about ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the pub­lic sec­tor. So to achieve that in five years it is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult if not im­pos­si­ble.

Be­fore go­ing fur­ther, Mr Walk­er, I want to es­tab­lish your bona fides. Can you give us some­thing of your back­ground?

Cer­tain­ly. I am a char­tered ac­coun­tant who has worked in Lon­don for al­most 30 years. I have been in­volved in ma­jor trans­ac­tions there and I have been a con­sul­tant for some of the largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

I have been re­spon­si­ble for de­sign­ing and de­vel­op­ing in­for­ma­tion sys­tems for Nat West Bank, one of the largest banks in Eu­rope; Na­tion­wide An­glia So­ci­ety, the largest build­ing so­ci­ety in the world. I did work for GE Cap­i­tal, the largest in­dus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in the world.

With that sort of record, why did you de­cide to come back to T&T five years ago?

My fa­ther was ter­mi­nal­ly ill and I felt I had to be here for him and I start­ed do­ing con­sul­tan­cy work here and, iron­i­cal­ly, the Cli­co thing hap­pened. I al­so did a bit of po­lit­i­cal work by as­sist­ing Win­ston Dook­er­an be­fore he be­came Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, in do­ing some analy­sis along with Mary King, Prof Patrick Wat­son and In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li. I made more mon­ey work­ing in Eng­land, but I did not en­joy my life there the way I am en­joy­ing it here.

Mr Walk­er, do you have is­sues with this Gov­ern­ment in the con­text of not be­ing of­fered a po­si­tion af­ter work­ing with the team which as­sist­ed Mr Dook­er­an?

I was dis­ap­point­ed in that I was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to utilise all the ex­per­tise that I have de­vel­oped down the years to as­sist in the run­ning of the coun­try... It was a se­vere dis­ap­point­ment to me. But that's wa­ter un­der the bridge. When I re­flect on it, more of­ten than not I am ac­tu­al­ly pleased. It is al­most like they have done me a favour by al­low­ing me to con­cen­trate on work­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor.

What made you get in­volved in the Cli­co de­ba­cle?

Hav­ing had so much ex­pe­ri­ence in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, in fi­nan­cial re­con­struc­tion and how to res­cue col­lapsed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, I was very con­cerned when the is­sue be­gan, so I wrote an ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled, Cli­co: a look in­to the Abyss. That's where it start­ed–and I am not a pol­i­cy-hold­er of Cli­co. We pulled to­geth­er a team of con­sul­tants called the San­ta Rosa Team, so named be­cause the first meet­ing was held at a home in the dis­trict.

Mem­bers of the group are to­tal­ly com­mit­ted be­cause we feel a great in­jus­tice has been done and they want to be part of the so­lu­tion and al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis we are hear­ing heart-rend­ing sto­ries, es­pe­cial­ly from the el­der­ly, about the hard­ships they are en­dur­ing be­cause of this un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion.

Are you see­ing the light at the end of this tun­nel, as it were, Mr Walk­er?

Un­for­tu­nate­ly no, at least not in the short term, and there is to­tal com­mit­ment by our group to press on against what is an il­le­gal so­lu­tion.

Which is?

I am talk­ing about the re­cent­ly amend­ed Cen­tral Bank Act, which ex­press­ly for­bids any le­gal ac­tion against Cli­co for any mat­ter what­so­ev­er, even for pur­suit of mat­ters that have al­ready been won in court. Now the on­ly rea­son that kind of leg­is­la­tion could be en­act­ed has to be in or­der to com­mit an il­le­gal act.

Mr Walk­er, are you sug­gest­ing, in­sin­u­at­ing or al­leg­ing that the Gov­ern­ment en­gaged in an il­le­gal­i­ty by pass­ing that piece of leg­is­la­tion?

Ab­solute­ly. The mea­sure was passed which states very clear­ly that no­body could sue Cli­co for any­thing once the com­pa­ny is un­der the con­trol of the Cen­tral Bank (CB). And we see no signs of the CB re­lin­quish­ing this con­trol of Cli­co any time soon.

How is this af­fect­ing the pol­i­cy-hold­ers?

Let me give you one of the most ex­treme ex­am­ples. There is a pol­i­cy-hold­er who was told by their au­di­tors to pro­duce a state­ment of ac­count to show how much you have de­posit­ed with Cli­co. Would you be­lieve that they re­fused to give the pol­i­cy-hold­er the state­ment? We have no­body to turn to, as the reg­u­la­tor is run­ning the com­pa­ny, and you know you can­not go to the reg­u­la­tor to com­plain about the reg­u­la­tor.

There is sim­ply no­body you can turn to and one of the most de­press­ing el­e­ments in this whole sce­nario is the com­plete si­lence of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty up­on the pas­sage of this op­pres­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion. No at­tor­ney has come out and spo­ken against it.

Don't you think, Mr Walk­er, that Gov­ern­ment took that ac­tion in or­der to keep the com­pa­ny afloat?

No. I don't agree, be­cause there was a cor­rect way to do so, as is be­ing done in every oth­er coun­try, which is, the com­pa­ny comes to the gov­ern­ment with a plan which has a cost and the gov­ern­ment would agree or dis­agree. If it agrees, the com­pa­ny goes about run­ning its busi­ness.

No gov­ern­ment in any oth­er part of the world has had any dif­fi­cul­ty with pol­i­cy-hold­ers be­cause there is no nexus be­tween the gov­ern­ment and pol­i­cy-hold­ers, un­less one is cre­at­ed, as was done here.

So pol­i­cy-hold­ers sim­ply have to hold their heads and bawl un­til when­ev­er this mess has been re­solved one way or the oth­er?

Ef­fec­tive­ly a gun has been put to their heads. I wouldn't mince words on this... they re­al­ly don't have a choice in the mat­ter. The choice that they have is whether to pur­sue a course of le­gal ac­tion to make good the deficit they suf­fered, and we are en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to join us to pur­sue that ac­tion. But the dif­fi­cul­ty we are hav­ing is we sim­ply do not have the kind of fi­nan­cial re­sources to do so.

Fi­nal­ly, Mr Walk­er, how do you rate the han­dling of the econ­o­my by the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion?

In the run-up to the last gen­er­al elec­tion we were se­vere­ly crit­i­cal of the way the econ­o­my was be­ing han­dled by the then PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, and we were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the deficit and the con­se­quent in­crease in the debt sit­u­a­tion. But the sit­u­a­tion has not im­proved. I am al­so con­cerned about the in­abil­i­ty of this Gov­ern­ment to start the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the coun­try's econ­o­my.