From the 100 Million dollars Miss Universe Beauty Contest to the Failed World Beat Festival.
NOW the 40 Million dollars Millennium Festival. If this issue was not about taxpayer's money, it would be comical.
We have another spending extravaganza taking place in Tobago called the Millennium Concert, which is costing taxpayers a whooping forty million dollars. The people are being promised twenty-eight minutes on B.B.C. to place the nation on the international map.
Chief secretary for Tobago affairs Hochoy Charles and Eddy Grant are the main players behind this fiasco. Miss Josanne Lennard, spokes person for this project, treated the people to an hour-long diatribe on the TV6 morning program.
They are presenting the same arguments that the Prime Minister gave for the one hundred million-dollar expenditure on the Miss Universe Beauty Contest, and Carlos John's eight million-dollar World Beat Festival. People have recognized the failure of these two projects to bring any of the benefits promised.
The question is why would they invest taxpayer's money in another extravagant project, especially at a time when we are hearing of workers in Tobago not getting their salaries because of the shortage of funds.
To understand this brazen expenditure we have to revisit the fraudulent promises and claims made about the Miss Universe contest by the Prime Minister Mr. Basdeo Panday, Mervin Assam, the Minister in charge of Tourism, Carlos John, Chairman of N.C.C., and Donald Trump. The nation was told that the government might have to bring in floating hotels to accommodate the thousands of tourists that would have visited our shores. People were told that they may have to open their homes to accommodate tourists. They claimed that billions of dollars in investments would flow into this country after this exposure, and small businesspersons should come out to cash in on the brisk trade that will follow this event. They all repeated Donald Trumps' claim that over two billion people would have viewed the beauty contest live.
The Prime Minister and his supporters are still defending the one hundred million-dollar expenditure, although, hotels were half filled for the show, venders lost their money, and no new investments came because of the show. They have not yet submitted proper accounting on how this money was spent.
The media encouraged this hype after they received large sums of money to promote the illusion. Several stations were promoting themselves as the official Miss Universe station.
I was furious on all the talk-shows explaining the madness that the public was buying into. I explained that a little research on the Internet would have shown that all these claims of sudden prosperity were made to other countries before, and they did not bear fruit.
Regular Talk-Show callers accused me of being unpatriotic in the face of this great national project. The majority bought the hype, and the few others who disagreed were not speaking up.
The public was treated to a similar amount of hype in respect to the World Beat Festival, which was another failure.
It is not surprising today that another group of people feel that they can enrich themselves and use the same claims the government made.
Apparently Hochoy Charles is not prepared to leave office without his personal millions. He has witnessed this UNC government enrich themselves and their families so he may think he is entitled to his share.
Who is going to condemn him? The same people who defended the one hundred million-dollar wastage? What would be their argument? He is just promoting Tobago and they will reap the rewards just like the Miss Universe. He is ensuring that Tobago is placed on the International map, just like the claim made about Trinidad. He is seeing culture as a great investment and is promoting the local artists. The same story all over again.
How many people were against the Miss Universe wastage? Therefore, who is going to say that he does not have the right to do the same for Tobago as the Prime Minister did for Trinidad?
This time people are angry but they did not take that same position in reference to the Miss Universe colossal wastage. Is it that they feel only one type of people can promote this country? Are Donald Trump and the Prime Minister the only people who can make these dubious claims? Is it that one group of people are allowed to be greedy and to fill their pockets.
Yes, those who are against a similar project today cannot claim to be looking out for the country's interest. Are they racist for condemning an African person for doing the same as the East Indian Prime Minister in consort with Donald Trump?
This is the problem when people support blindly and dishonestly, they are left without a valid claim when the same wrong is done by another group of people whom they do not support.
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