Where is the policy equity?

THE EDITOR: Our Republican Constitution mandates policy equity in the way government treats all citizens and, more importantly, equity regarding an imperative for distributive justice so that as far as possible citizens of this country should be enabled to be employed.

I, therefore, ask: is this PNM Government not acting ultra vires vis-a-vis the Republican Constitution when it deliberately chooses to single out the gaming industry and impose a tax increase of 100 per cent on that industry? Is the Government treating equitably with all industries when it hand-picks that industry for a tax burden that is three times the rate of all other sectors?

The Government’s reason for its unequal treatment of the gaming industry regarding the disparity in taxation cannot readily be defended against the stated requirement of the supreme law of the land. The evidence provided by Finance Minister Colm Imbert was speculative if not entirely specious. This unfair and inequitable tax ought to be the subject of judicial review.

Further to this, if the Government’s action in imposing an illegal and inequitable tax increase on this lone industry, in turn, is causally related to the extinguishing of thousands of jobs with no alternative employment plan offered, does that not compound the illegality of his action?

The Government’s deliberate policy choice of inequity in its official tax regime has consequences on citizens’ ability to enjoy meaningful employment.

An interesting aspect of the reported concerns of those employees in that industry has been the related cold and heartless response allegedly emanating from a minister who reportedly remonstrated with demonstrators that they should “go to the Parliament or their constituency offices” and lodge their complaints. The minister knows well the impotence of a “system” that is rigged against the vulnerable.

It is part of an existing social construct that is imbued with a veneer of respectability derived from a twisted “legalism” that is in the service of immorality. In this so-called “republic” where taxation exists without either representation or participation, what material good can come out of the “constituency office?”

STEVE SMITH via e-mail

Comments

"Where is the policy equity?"

More in this section