En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­swered one of the top­ics that have been on the lips of many cit­i­zens — whether the re­cent pur­chase of a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle was not ill-timed giv­en the strife many cit­i­zens are cur­rent­ly fac­ing due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Young and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh pur­chased lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles us­ing tax ex­emp­tions af­ford­ed to them as state of­fi­cials.

The furore this mat­ter has sparked is un­der­stand­able, com­ing as it does at a time when a huge sec­tor of the pop­u­la­tion is strug­gling to sur­vive due to the loss of jobs and liveli­hoods as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic’s crush­ing body blows.

It was on­ly in Oc­to­ber of last year, dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate, that the is­sue of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and oth­er state of­fi­cials ben­e­fit­ing from tax breaks on ve­hi­cles, while the pub­lic was asked to con­tin­ue to bear the brunt of the eco­nom­ic fall­out of COVID-19 and falling en­er­gy prices, was raised by cit­i­zens. In re­sponse, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had promised he would ap­proach Cab­i­net to sug­gest a cap of $350,000 on tax ex­emp­tions for ve­hi­cle pur­chas­es by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

But as Min­is­ter Young not­ed yes­ter­day that this is­sue has not been a pri­or­i­ty for the Cab­i­net, he was al­so un­apolo­getic about his Mer­cedes Benz GLE 450 pur­chase. While say­ing he un­der­stood some peo­ple may be up­set about it at this time and that he un­der­stood cit­i­zens’ cur­rent plights as well, Min­is­ter Young al­so said he was de­serv­ing of this en­ti­tle­ment as a hard-work­ing pub­lic ser­vant.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Min­is­ter Young and oth­er politi­cians now fer­vent­ly ar­gu­ing the is­sue may have com­plete­ly missed the point.

You see no one is be­grudg­ing politi­cians the right to en­joy­ing the ex­emp­tion af­ford­ed to them in the law.

How­ev­er, at a time when so many among us are fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment, fi­nan­cial ru­in, hunger, sick­ness and even death and amid a State of Emer­gency, the tim­ing of these pur­chas­es on­ly serve to ex­pose the dis­dain our politi­cians gen­er­al­ly hold for cit­i­zens.

The re­al ques­tion that must be asked is, are politi­cians on both sides of the aisle do­ing enough in their con­stituen­cies to help the in­creas­ing num­bers of cit­i­zens who have fall­en be­low the pover­ty line? What have they done aside from cast­ing blame on each oth­er for our present sit­u­a­tion, look­ing for shame­less po­lit­i­cal gain? This is a mat­ter which of­ten comes up in de­bate but on­ly a few ac­tu­al­ly walk the talk.

Have these politi­cians led per­son­al ham­per dri­ves in their com­mu­ni­ties, as oth­er Good Samar­i­tans have done na­tion­wide? Are they even vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties to see how con­stituents are far­ing, even if to of­fer com­fort and chan­nel some state as­sis­tance their way?

Need­less to say, with the COVID mea­sures like­ly to stay with us for a while, it is not too late for all politi­cians to show cit­i­zens they tru­ly un­der­stand their cir­cum­stances and re­deem the sit­u­a­tion.

The lead­ers of our na­tion are ob­lig­at­ed, by the very of­fice they oc­cu­py, to in­spire and ral­ly the pop­u­la­tion in these per­ilous times to per­se­vere through the hard­ships we face and to be our broth­er’s keep­ers de­spite all the ad­ver­si­ty we must over­come dai­ly.

It is time for them to start set­ting the ex­am­ple.