Stand up to the United States

“You should be more progressive in your thinking and stop behaving as if we are still under colonial power,” Moonilal said during yesterday’s debate on the motion to adopt the report of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) appointed to consider the Tax Information Exchange Agreement Bill, 2016, known as the FATCA bill, in the House of Representatives.

Claiming “a global tidal wave” was washing against FATCA, Moonilal said, “Maybe it is being led by the Member of Siparia (Kamla Persad-Bissessar) who had the ‘Fenwickian audacity’ to stand up and ask the Trump administration” if they were keeping their election’s campaign promise to repeal FATCA. He quoted the Wall Street Journal as saying that a tiny island did what several global big shot leaders could not do.

“When the Member of Siparia did that, they laughed,” he said, “saying, ‘You think Trump taking on you’?” Noting that roughly eight million American working overseas have been hit by FATCA, Moonilal said that some foreign banks have responded by not accepting American customers.

He noted, too, that because FATCA was hurting Caribbean economies, a number of prominent Caribbean citizens including Dr Kenneth Hall, Owen Arthur, Dr Richard Bernal and Dr Compton Bourne met yesterday in a seminar in New York to look at the effects of FATCA and what should be done.

Government should follow that type of thinking, he said, instead of trying to pass bad law hurriedly.

On the JSC report, he said, the Opposition believed that it should be accepted as an interim one, and he proposed an amendment to the motion that will allow the work of the JSC to be extended to complete its work.

The three Opposition members on the JSC, he said, did not have the opportunity to submit a minority report and also was unable “in good time, to consider a final draft.” On February 3, when Finance Minister Colm Imbert declared that a report would go to the house - whether final or interim, Moonilal said, “we are very accustomed that when an interim report comes, we asked for an extension.” However, he said that the February 3 announcement purported that the report was going to be a final one and the three Opposition members expressed their concerns through emails.