The fact that key leadership figures are prepared to sacrifice the entire country’s economy to satisfy their own selfish needs, desires and ambitions, is more than shocking.
A well-known ploy used by corrupt leaders is to gather around them an army of sycophants who will show loyalty in exchange for favours including privileged positions, mostly undeserved, and to axe those who stand up for what is best for the country.
This is what appears to have happened to the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordon, who stepped in unselfishly out of retirement to make great and brave efforts to prevent the country’s economy from being plunged into junk status. Now, because he is doing his job ‘too well’ from top leadership’s point of view, attempts are being made to discredit him with trumped up charges. The ‘mistake’ that the Minister of Finance is making is to block unnecessary expenditure on badly managed state entities that are hemorrhaging state funds. These entities are badly managed because they are run by sycophants who have neither the qualifications, skills, nor the moral integrity to run the organisations successfully or profitably.
To make up for revenue wasted by government, attempts are made to bleed the public by imposing all kinds of taxes such as the most recent sugar tax, which is transparently ridiculous. Another example is the e-toll system which amounts to triple taxation in the form of the fuel levy, vehicle licenses and more recently taxation on the purchase of tyres.
With the ANC losing its grip on power, some even suspect that there is a deliberate strategy to sabotage the economy so that those who take over the reins of power will be blamed for the financial mess in which the country will have been plunged.
The public is not as blind as the current leadership would like to believe. The people are aware of the power-clinging skulduggery that is taking place in high places. What is being done now to threaten the country’s economy is equivalent to treason.
(Letter shortened by the editor)
