Caribbean & Central America - June 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

*** NEW BAHAMIAN GOVERNMENT SHOCKED BY COUNTRY’S FINANCES. Having won a landslide victory in the 7 May general elections [WR-12-18], Prime Minister Perry Christie’s Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) has suggested that members of the ousted Free National Movement (FNM) government of Hubert Ingraham were guilty of “mismanagement” and “abuse” of the public purse in leaving behind a US$500m deficit for the 2012/13 fiscal year. Some of the excess spending was directly related to the election, such as for instance a jobs programme that had a budget of US$25m but will absorb more than US$50m. A number of sizeable capital expenditure commitments and contracts were allegedly signed days before the 7 May polls, and PLP chairman Bradley Roberts said that he would be “shocked” if criminal charges were not instigated following an investigation into the management of public funds by the FNM government (2007-2012).

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