Emotions ran high yesterday at the commission of enquiry into the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) as former finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, continued his testimony at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.

Davies faced questions from borrowers from failed institutions, a graduate student from the University of the West Indies and the Jamaica Labour Party-aligned Generation 2000 (G2K).

Impassioned questions about Davies' policies dominated the day's session as self-described victims of FINSAC lined up one after the other to share stories that had many either gasping or shaking their heads.

Trevor Donegal, a borrower, in his contribution said the high interest rates suffocated his business. He asked Davies why his and other businesses were not offered an option to restructure their debts, which often spiralled to astronomical figures.

Designed to heal

Davies responded by saying that FINSAC dealt with each business on a case-by-case basis, and he was not involved in the day-to-day running of the institution, which was designed to heal the system.

Davies, however, said he had every confidence that those earmarked to run the company would have been fair to the debtors.

During this exchange, chairman of the commission, Justice Boyd Carey, intervened, asking the former finance minister if, with knowledge of the hardships caused by the financial meltdown of the period and the suffering that Jamaicans were expe-riencing, any policy direction was given to FINSAC to deal with individuals who could not afford the interest payments in the first place.

Davies said it would have been unwise for the minister of finance to micro-manage the bad debts, as it could have led to accusations of political interference.

The commission of enquiry had been set up to investigate the financial meltdown of the 1990s which led to FINSAC's creation and intervention in the operations of a number of banks and businesses.

Too big to fail

Proving that no query of the meltdown was complete without political shading, G2K President Delano Seivright asked Davies why the National Commercial Bank was not given the same treatment as Century National Bank and Eagle Merchant Bank.

Davies drew on the "too big to fail complex", saying that if NCB went under it would have compromised the entire banking sector.

The political grandstanding was turned up a notch when, briefly before a break in proceedings, members of the People's National Party hierarchy, Party President Portia Simpson Miller, along with Robert Pickersgill, Lisa Hanna and Wykeham McNeill appeared, all to stand by their comrade.

While they offered words of support for their man and his actions, the majority of the audience did not. Borrowers such as John Desulme, Yolande Grey, Mechesk Willis and Llewellyn Bailey repeatedly asked Davies why more was not done for the borrowers, who were the heart of the productive sector in Jamaica.