December 19, 2013

Dear Sir,

I wish everyone an enjoyable holiday and courage and vision to face the new year with its challenges. I am not pushing any mysticism when I say I sense the mood of the country as similar to the 70s. It’s like deja-vu, we have similar naïveté in place and the stakes are high with a boiling polarisation. We need unity in a bad way but the political divide has too much pus between them to become connected in any tangible way.

We still have a rational centrist group but too far removed from the political process. Extremes still have the controlling influences. The rhetoric is moving towards the centre but not the heart and soul. Fifty years should have taught us what we don’t need and where we need to be. We can express it, almost taste it, but we know in our hearts it’s not within the reach of the current political dynamic.

While in the invisible world of politics the monetarists are usually always blind to social repercussions except in a market sense. They will lead countries to social conflict and in some economic jurisdictions even war without realising that at times conflict is policy driven.

Bermuda has had enough strife and has denied so many opportunities to get it right. Basically all Bermudians irrespective of race, ethnicity or gender want to survive and be able to make a world for our young to grow up and thrive. We want the ability to have a reasonable glimpse at a secure future.

The old bank of Bermuda is gone and so has the system of banking that was behind the last century of development. All the former banks were into capital and their role in the community with their cronyism, nepotism and outright racial preferences helped to create and sustain an unequal society.

The poverty and slump into darkness by a huge sector of our community was a result of neglect and institutions having their snouts so far into the trough while they were feeding, they could not hear moans in the community or even the widows with their children crying over the dead bones on the bank’s doorsteps. The new banks are not into capital so if you don’t have any money, they don’t either, but if you have too much money they are willing to give more. It’s not their fault the new banking systems worldwide with their new rules and mandate has made them simply risk managers and money services.

I say this because money and access to capital makes and defines communities and we are a community desperately in need of new capital. We are not a huge country with stacks of resources, we can’t artificially print dollars. The question is what kind of terms and from whence will this capital come? It’s not just a question for us, in reality it’s a global question. In our case the question of what money will be the handshake to our future, and one that will either bridge the gap and bring harmony or one that will widen the gap and bring decrease. It’s as simple as that, so I am suggesting the trigger is loaded and no one is asleep they will hear the sound.

If I don’t get a chance to write I wish everyone the very best the season offers.

KHALID WASI