By The Free National Movement

On Oct. 12 the Leader of the Free National Movement, Sen. Tommy Turnquest, confronted the PLP Government with details of inefficiency and untruthful assertions by Trade and Industry Minister Leslie Miller, particularly with regard to The Bahamas' accessing of funding from the European Union.

The FNM labelled Mr. Miller a national embarrassment, and demanded that the Prime Minister remove Miller from the Cabinet.

Minister Miller, instead of responding responsibly to the Official Opposition charges, arrogantly termed those serious charges attempts at "cheap political mileage", and openly declared that he had no time for the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition Party.

The Free National Movement, on behalf of the Bahamian people, vigorously resents such an attitude of arrogance and dictatorship by a Cabinet Minister, and renews the Party's call to the Prime Minister to dismiss Leslie Miller from the Cabinet and save the nation further embarrassment by a man who is clearly unfit to head a ministry in a government which claims to be honourable.

Today, the FNM offers, for the record, the details of those charges, in order that the people of The Bahamas can for themselves gauge the seriousness of the Leslie Miller folly, and appreciate why it is important that the Prime Minister remove this blight on the country.

THE ARROGANT MINISTER OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Early in this PLP Administration, Trade and Industry Minister Miller, went off to Europe to meet with the European Union, he came back claiming to have been the first Bahamian Cabinet Minister to visit Brussels. He was wrong, of course. It was an unnecessary exaggeration, and the record, available from his own Ministry's files, proved him to be wrong.

Just recently, he went back to Europe and promised to bring back $35 million for hurricane relief. Upon his return Minister Leslie Miller had to say something upon his highly anticipated return to The Bahamas. This is more especially so since he came back with his hands swinging with no European money in them!

He claimed that his visit revealed that The Bahamas had failed to efficiently access assistance from the European Union, and, further, that some $20 to $30 million in European funding had been squandered by The Bahamas.

A WRONG AND ILL-INFORMED MINISTER MILLER

Again, he is wrong; he continues to ignore the records available in his own Ministry's files. It seems that the Minister is averse to reading. Worse still, it appears that he takes no advice, particularly not the advice of civil servants, the experts in his ministerial portfolio responsibility. And so, the Minister is, not surprisingly, frequently uninformed and frequently wrong.

Minister Miller now tells the Bahamian people that $56 million EU funding has not been accessed by The Bahamas because of the inefficiency of both the former PLP and FNM governments!

It is the view of my Party that Minister Miller is again ill-informed, and this is his latest attempt to misinform and mislead the Bahamian public on general funding arrangements under the EU, Lome and Cotonou Agreements.

Could it be that the Minister is anxious to deflect attention away from the fact that his most recent trip to Brussels was really a private vacation and totally unnecessary so far as accessing hurricane relief assistance from the EU?

A MINISTER MISSING IN ACTION?

Could it be that the Minister does not wish the public to know that he was MIA (missing in action) during his latest European jaunt, resulting in The Bahamas Government having to pay 230 Pounds Sterling for a VIP lounge and chauffeur for an arrival of the Minister which did not happen?

It is noteworthy that the Minister, when he finally showed, was not accompanied to Brussels by any civil servant.

Minister Miller is not a man easily embarrassed. If he misspeaks once, he feels there can be no harm in misspeaking a second or even a third time, and so the buffoonery continues.

If gasoline prices had been reduced just once following any of the Minister's frequent outbursts in the press about what he was doing — negotiating with Venezuela and Trinidad to reduce the cost of fuel at Bahamian gas stations — one could try to excuse him.

Yet he continues to make these ridiculous claims even in the face of the continuing increase in the cost of gasoline at the pumps here and internationally, and even while everyone else in the country knows that the fluctuating price for petroleum products is far beyond influence by a single country with a population of 300,000.

A MINISTER WITH FOOT-IN-MOUTH DISEASE

In the course of his short ministerial career, Minister Miller has been distinguished by a propensity . . . Nay, a habit to say anything he wants about anyone. One need only recall the following exhortations:

ü Major oil companies are "thieves" who gouge Bahamians.

ü Hard-pressed Bahamian gas retailers are called upon to make sacrifice and take a cut in their already small profit margins while the Government would continue to collect its full tax.

ü Straw vendors in Nassau are "unreasonable".

ü The FTAA was "American Imperialism".

ü Retailers were ripping-off Bahamians because their scales are not checked.

ü Importers of used cars put people's lives at risk.

ü The United States ought to increase its hurricane assistance to The Bahamas since we are really 'an extension of Dade County"; and so on.

To say that the Minister suffers from an acute case of "foot-in-mouth" disease would be an understatement.

THE MINISTER CANNOT CHANGE THE LAW

Sometimes Minister Miller's buffoonery has had legal consequences -- as when he declared that major food store chains might now remain open on Sundays until 12 Noon. The Minister has no legal authority to authorise any such thing. The law passed on the FNM's watch in Government mandates that such food store chains must close at 10:00 a.m. on Sundays - not 12 Noon.

The power to change the law rests with the Parliament of The Bahamas, not Minister Miller. The declaration or bogus order given by Minister Miller for such stores to be open until 12 Noon on Sundays is illegal, and we call upon the Commissioner of Police to uphold the law! The Minister and ultimately the PLP government must adhere to the law and learn to follow proper procedures and protocols.

Again the Ministry's files could have alerted him to this fact, but this Minister is not concerned with either the record or the law. He considers himself a power unto himself, and, so far, his Prime Minister has not seen fit to put an end to his recklessness.

TO BRUSSELS AGAIN... AGAIN, NO MEETINGS?

So off he went again to Brussels not to attend meetings - he seldom does on his foreign excursions paid for by the Bahamian taxpayer - (perhaps because he likes the weather) - in search of $35 million in hurricane relief; $10 million more than his first declared intention.

Of course, any expectation of receiving $35 million in hurricane relief assistance from the European Union as a result of Minister Miller's visit is unrealistic, if not utter foolishness. And, of course, he came home empty-handed.

The Free National Movement challenges the Minister to produce evidence to back up his untruthful assertion that The Bahamas was eligible to receive $56 million in EU funding but did not because of gaffes of previous Governments and the inaction of civil servants.

Since 1975 and the first Lome Agreement, The Bahamas has accessed EU assistance for infrastructural development, for institutional building and for export promotion.

Minister Miller does not appear to have understood anything of what was explained to him in Brussels. Contrary to the misinformation that he seeks to promote in the press, EU funding is allocated to specific national or regional projects. The funding remains committed to the specified project until its completion. Only then can governments negotiate with the EU to pool any leftover funding with separate funds to fund new projects.

THE FNM NEGOTIATED EU FUNDING

When the FNM came to office in 1992 it successfully negotiated with the EU to pool leftover funding from projects initiated under the Pindling administration, and to use those funds to carry out important infrastructural development projects in long neglected Family Islands.

It was the policy position of the FNM Government that assistance provided under the Lome Agreements ought to be used to promote the objectives for which such assistance was intended – that is, to put in place and sustain infrastructural projects needed to accelerate economic and social development of The Bahamas generally and of the Family Islands in particular.

EU FUNDING WAS ACCESSED F. I. INFRASTRUCTURE

When, in early 1997, The Bahamas signed the Second Financial Protocol under Lome IV, the then Minister of Finance, Sir William Allen, could report that The Bahamas had accessed some $24 million under successive Lome Conventions since 1975. And he could report that since 1992, the FNM Government had used pooled leftover funding, available but unused and unplanned for by the first PLP Government to:

* Construct and pave the Great Abaco Highway between Treasure Cay and Marsh Harbour, Abaco;

* Reconstruct and pave the Queen's Highway in Long Island from Seymour's to Gordons;

* Electrify North Cat Island;

* Construct a new airport at Rum Cay;

* Set aside funding to construct and repair the main road in Acklins from Spring Point to Chesters and Lovely Bay, Acklins.

The FNM Government's "efficiency" in applying those funds to important social and economic development projects influenced the EU decision to increase the allocation to The Bahamas under the Second Financial Protocol.

If Minister Miller would read his Ministry's files (something he continually neglects to do), he would have learned of advance plans, left in place by the FNM, to use the increased allocation of $5.7 million provided under the Second Financial Protocol for national indicative projects, like the construction of a new airport at Marsh Harbour, Abaco, and for additional road works in Acklins.

If these plans have been shelved, it is not the doing of the former FNM Government, nor of civil servants; it is a post-May, 2002 decision made by the Government in which Mr. Miller serves as a Cabinet Minister.

Minister Miller appears also to be ignorant of funding to The Bahamas for participation in regional indicative projects that are expected to benefit the Caricom region.

THE EU FUNDED HOTEL TRAINING CENTRE

EU funding for The Bahamas Tourism Training Centre situated on Thompson Boulevard, negotiated under the Pindling administration, and for the Eugene Dupuch Law School, negotiated under the Ingraham administration, are examples of regional indicative projects. Mr. Miller's continuing effort to take credit for negotiating the funding for the Law School in the weeks after coming to office is laughable, and it is patently dishonest.

Minister Miller continues to ignore the fact that in addition to direct assistance, by way of grants to the Government for national and regional indicative projects, both the Bahamas Electricity Corporation and the Water and Sewerage Corporation benefited from interest rate subsidies on loans from the European Investment Bank, significantly reducing the cost of borrowing.

And, Minister Miller does not appreciate the reality that accessing funding from the EU is a lengthy undertaking; this is well known to everyone in Government, except Minister Miller. The delays are almost always caused on the European side because of the extensive lengths the EU goes to prevent improperly planned projects and corruption in the process.

This entails a project approval process through the EU Legate's office in Jamaica prior to its referral to Brussels for final approval. This first stage can take an inordinately long time.

. . . AND THE EUGENE DUPUCH LAW SCHOOL

In the case of the Eugene Dupuch Law School, approval had been given by the Legate's office in Jamaica, but when a new Legate was appointed, his review of the project introduced an entirely new set of requirements which had to be met before the project could be submitted to Brussels. Minister Miller was proud to announce his signing of the funding arrangement for the Law School soon after he came to office.

Of course he had done precious little of the work to get the funding. Perhaps he can explain why, with approval in hand, and after two and a half years in office, his government has not broken ground on the project.

Another cause for the delay in the implementation of EU funded projects are the "conditionalities" attached to the funding; that is, a requirement for EU funded projects to use European materials, fixtures and fittings. Such materials are, in the majority of instances, highly inappropriate for The Bahamas where we have not adopted the European metric system of measurement, where our electrical system is different to Europe's, and where transportation costs from Europe could significantly increase the cost of the project.

Additionally, a waiver to permit the use of non-European goods on EU funded projects requires additional lengthy negotiations.

Though frustrating, the demands from the Europeans for EU funded projects are reasonable from their point of view. Clearly, they do not wish for their tax-payers' money to be spent corruptly or inefficiently, and to the extent possible, they would wish for their funding to be spent on European goods, which create jobs for their citizens.

WE MUST PLAY BY EU RULES

Those of us who benefit from the assistance of Europe must learn to play by their rules. The same is true of any other concessional assistance available to developing countries whether the source is the IDB, the United Nations and its agencies, or from other countries, such as China.

Minister Miller had better learn the rules of Government and learn to abide by them.

THE PM MUST REMOVE THIS UNACCEPTABLE MINISTER!

The FNM finds it unacceptable that Minister Miller flouts the law and encourages others to do likewise.

The FNM finds it unacceptable that Minister Miller travels for meetings — which, reportedly, he hardly attends — at Bahamian taxpayers' expense.

The FNM finds it unacceptable that Minister Miller denigrates hard working civil servants who have no recourse to defend themselves against him.

The FNM finds it unacceptable that Minister Miller besmirches the character of hard-working Bahamian businessmen and entrepreneurs with baseless allegations.

The FNM finds most unacceptable Minister Miller's erratic outbursts which continue to bring ridicule upon our Country both at home and abroad.

Minister Miller's antics when he travels abroad, compounded by his latest headline-grabbing mis-statements, serve to show how ill-suited he is to hold ministerial office. He ought to be dismissed, and we so recommend it to the Prime Minister for the Minister of Trade and Industry, Leslie Miller, IS A NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT.

Failure to remove this minister speaks to the leadership skills of the Prime Minister. Failure to remove this minister speaks to the competence of this PLP Government.

(Please visit our website at www.freenationalmovement.org or write to us at PO Box N-10713, Nassau, Bahamas or email us at fnm@coralwave.com)