By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

The Opposition’s leader has hit back at Sir Franklyn Wilson over his criticism of the party’s banking reforms by arguing that he is attacking the same proposals he recommended.

Michael Pintard, responding to the Sunshine Holdings and Arawak Homes chairman’s assertion that he was “talking fool” to suggest he could change the Canadian banks’ policies, argued that Sir Franklyn in the very next breath backed the Free National Movement’s (FNM) plan by suggesting this nation follow Barbados’ lead on banking reform.

Asserting that nation’s changes were similar to what the FNM is proposing, Mr Pintard added: “Some of the people who are talking loudest, who didn’t bother to read my comments on the banking reform, recommended the very same things that I said in the banking reform.”

Dr Duane Sands, the FNM’s chairman, took a blunter and more personal approach by stating his party “does not need lectures from a PLP oligarch”.  He defended the FNM’s reform proposals as a “careful, responsible” approach that balances business and consumer interests.

“This is as it should be in our democracy, and we believe that the FNM is approaching this matter in a careful, responsible manner, because we in the FNM are strongly pro business and pro consumer,” Dr Sands asserted. “We wouldn’t send armed guards to collect taxes at gunpoint. We believe in a free market that is well regulated for the protection of consumers, businesses and the broader common good.”

He clarified that the FNM supports a free market where financial services operators can adjust their prices competitively, and is opposed to fixed price controls, while emphasising the need for a regulatory regime that ensures fairness, transparency and accessibility in banking fees.

“It is unfortunate that one of the biggest bigwigs, and one of the most entitled members of the PLP, said that Mr Pintard was, and I’m quoting, ‘talking fool’, and that the banks should not be approached in a so-called dictatorial manner,” Dr Sands said.

“Now, never mind he claimed that he hadn’t read the leader of the Opposition’s comments, because if he had bothered he would have seen that the banking reforms that he considered best practices were in the very same proposal that he disparaged.”