COLM Imbert, the Government’s poster boy of hubris, was always going to land in trouble with the people.
Within months of Imbert becoming Finance Minister, Professor Selwyn Cudjoe called him out for his “casual cruelty… his notion that he possesses superior wisdom,” which gives him “the right to demean and insult anyone he chooses.”
Cudjoe later decried that “King Imbert wants a (Central Bank) Governor who is more compliant with his wishes rather than maintaining the bank’s independence.”
By then, a Court had denounced Imbert for sacking Jwala Rambaran without a fair hearing in keeping with fundamental justice.
Imbert’s arrogant image aside, common people were taking note of his five fuel price increases while giving tax breaks to elite yacht owners.
They stew over him “seeing clearly now” while the wealth gap widens, banks pressure small businesses, and the true unemployment figures are cooked.
They see the limited allocations to lift people out of poverty while hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars cannot be accounted for.
His financial narrative does not gel with the cost of living, in which prices of food staples have climbed by 70 per cent in the past decade.
Imbert has short shrift for economic experts who hold a different view or expose the structural gaps in the economy.
On top of that, he is said to block journalists who challenge him on social media, and he reportedly once had an elevator side aside for his sole use.
Imbert’s self-importance is even more troubling since he is often the country’s head honcho as a result of our globetrotting Prime Minister.
Public sympathy is not with him in the Auditor General fracas partly because of the build-up of resentment by the suffering working class against his raw egotism.
As far back as April 2016, a daily newspaper said that Imbert had not learned “the value of humility” and that “he remains as arrogant as usual.”
His smug and aloof manner is not an asset to his political party in the upcoming general election.
That was probably a reason for his removal as chair of the PNM.
He continues to come up short.
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