Mia Mottley Declares Her Assets! Hits David Thompson for SIX!!!!!!

For all his crap talk about integrity legislation and his pre-election promise that DLP members would declare their assets, prime minister David Thompson was hit for SIX when opposition leader Mia Mottley sent him reeling in the House of Assembly yesterday when she PUBLICLY DECLARED HER ASSETS AND LIABILITIES, becoming the first Barbadian politician to ever do so!

BFPE

http://www.nationnews.com/story/360180682472633.php

MIA WORTH $3.5 M

Published on: 7/9/08.

by ALBERT BRANDFORD

MIA’S ASSETS EXPOSED!

In a dramatic and unprecedented development last night, Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley publicly declared her assets and liabilities to the House of Assembly and challenged ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) MPs to do the same.

According to the document, as at June 30, 2008, Mottley has assets totalling $3.5 million and liabilities of $1.5 million.

The assets include houses at Frere Pilgrim, Lodge Hill and land at Cattlewash; three bank accounts; one vehicle; a credit union account; shares and mutual funds; part ownership in St Lawrence Management Inc. (which owns a condominium) and Barefoot Chattel Resorts Inc. and is settling a partnership agreement for 50 per cent of E.D. Mottley & Co. plus salaries from that company and as Leader of the Opposition plus $4 000 a month in rent from Frere Pilgrim.

Mottley’s revelations, the first by a Barbadian politician, stole a march on the DLP which had campaigned in the run-up to the January 15 general election on a platform that painted the then ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) as corrupt and guilty of a lack of integrity, transparency and accountability as well as of poor ministerial conduct after 14 years in office.

DLP president, now Prime Minister, David Thompson had promised that within the first 100 days, the new Government would enact a Freedom of Information Act and set up an Integrity Commission which he said would enforce existing anti-corruption laws.

He said the act would impose an obligation on a person in public life to make financial disclosures regarding his/her office or offices, his/her income, assets and liabilities and the assets of his spouse or relatives and all gifts made to him/her which exceeded a specified value.

Once the act came into force, he added, any minister or senior officer of Government would be required to make such a “disclosure” within three months of the passing of the new legislation.

In her 195-minute Reply to the 2008 Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals delivered by Thompson Monday evening, Mottley said she was satisfied that MPs who wanted to serve in public life would have to face the legislation.

“There is more there to protect the innocent than to prosecute the guilty,” she said. “There are more people in Barbados who are innocent but because of the nature of a small society and the viciousness of partisan activity and rumour that invariably people who are not guilty of anything have their names tarnished.

“Therefore, you have a system which only reflects a mechanism for being able to trigger investigations – because the Prevention of Çorruption Act is there to deal with substantive corruption.

“In that context,” Mottley said, “I believe I have a responsibility to lead by example today by submitting as a document of this Chamber, and will do so as I sit, a full declaration of assets that I own and liabilities in this country.

“And I do so cognisant that while it may be inconvenient for my business to be made public, it is far more convenient for me to do so as an example of leadership.

“I invite the Prime Minister to join me because if he is as sanctimonious, and if he is as serious about transparency and accountability as he said that he was, then I believe that as leaders of the political parties, then both myself and the leader of the Democratic Labour Party should declare publicly.”

Mottley said the BLP group in Parliament agreed they would want members of the DLP to join them and agree “that as of next week, we will submit declarations of assets to the Governor General to hold in trust until such time as an Integrity Commission is functional”.

She disclosed that former Prime Minister Owen Arthur would follow suit with his declaration today.