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SSB CEO Colin Young Takes on PUP
posted (June 18, 2019)
And so since, CEO Colin Young took the most hits from the PUP yesterday, he also took the opportunity to respond to the allegations made against him.

Here's what he had to say about their spin from yesterday:

Dr. Colin Young - CEO, SSB
"When I went to present to Cabinet in January of this year, and during that presentation, while the Administration understood the financial situation of the fund, they were also very concerned about the political implications. This is a political decision to raise contribution, and they were worried about what that would mean in terms of their political capital. I came back, and I sensitized the Board, and I felt that as the CEO, that I had to address the political side of a political decision to the Government. I had a hard time convincing the Prime Minister about this issue. In fact, the political decision would have been to not do anything, and let it pass on to some subsequent administration, as has been the case, and instead, I made the point - and if you look at the document that was sent - that SSB is far too important, far too big, and has too many beneficiaries for this to be a political decision only. I had to be also one that was in the best interest of the fund. And so, what I did is I pointed out to the Prime Minister that yes, you will have some impacts of this, but the right thing to do, despite the political fall-out that will come from it, is to do what it will take to safeguard SSB. That is what occurred. There was no sinister motive here. Too often, I have seen, in my capacity as CEO, in the Government of Belize, where sometimes decisions are not made because of the political calculus. In this case, I am pleased that I was able to convince the Government to do what is absolutely necessary to safeguard the fund. In addition to this memo, I worked, and I lobbied the individual Cabinet ministers, so that when this paper went up to the Cabinet to make a decision, about whether they were going to support the position that was agreed between SSB and the social partners, that there would be the political support this decision. I met with the majority of the Cabinet one on one."

"At the end of the day, however, when you're talking to the political directorate, it is a political decision. And I felt obliged to point out to the Government that if you do nothing - meaning if you did not agree the position taken by the social partners and SSB, that there will be political implications for that, and if you did something, there will also be political implication for doing that. But because it is the right thing, then you can say as the administration that you took the bull by the horn and made a difficult decision that was perhaps not in the clear interest of the UDP administration, but certainly, in the best interest of the fund."

Reporter
"You can't deny that it does sound believable though, that the allegations they made of the benefits to the UDP Administration, if they were the ones to save the Social Security Fund. It's a nice line item on a resume for re-election though."

Doug Singh - Board Chairman, SSB
"But, I think in all fairness though, Daniel, that's not what the memo said. The memo essentially said that there are political cost to this decision, and the memo suggested that there is an even greater cost, if you don't make it. So, it was not about providing to the party in government any advantage. It was actually reducing the disadvantage. So, it's a complete different optics, from what is being purported in the release."

Of note is that in this Cabinet paper that the SSB CEO prepared, he makes special mention of the PUP, which, interestingly, they conveniently omit in their press release.

In the paper, the CEO said, quote, "…it is undeniable that consecutive PUP administrations… have had pronounced negative impact on the Fund's financial sustainability. These abuses of contributors' money by the PUP….catalogued in the Social Security Reform Commission report (2002) and the Report of the Special Senate Inquiry of SSB (2004). These infamous legacy investments, including the mortgage securitization programs still, to this day, hurt the image, reputation and sustainability of SSB. SSB incurred almost 8 Million dollars loss from [those] securitization programs." End quote.

Finally, the only pro-UDP slant we could decipher comes from the CEO's concluding paragraph. In it he says, quote, "Passing the legal amendments now, 18 months prior to elections, will negate the PUP's attempt to use the social security financial situation as a campaign tactic to win support. If the PUP is successful in their fear-mongering, it can have significant political implications for the UDP leading up to the 2020 elections. Moreover, the UDP can steer the political discourse on the amendments to remind the Belizean populace of the PUP's recklessness with SSB. The UDP can leverage the increase in contributions as a win for workers, a win for SSB and a win for the UDP, while using the opportunity to remind young electors of why the PUP is not an option in 2020." End quote.

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