The debate leading up to the general election in 2020 is not yet in full swing, but already NDP candidates are dealing in a number of lies, especially as these relate to the economy and leadership. Today we reproduce the closing debate on the 2020 budget, which outlines a number of facts about the state of the country’s economy, and the general state of play in St.Vincent and the Grenadines.
Introduction
Between 1763 and the late 1990s, the economy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had, as its cornerstone, the export of a single agricultural product. Over the centuries, the export crop changed, from cotton to arrowroot to sugar to bananas – and the exploitation of enslaved Africans was abolished, but the remaining basic modes of production and economic structures remained in place.
The substantial transition from subsidised monocrop agricultural export began in earnest 19 years ago, with the onset of the Education Revolution and the agricultural diversification around bananas to now include root crops, livestock, poultry, fish, cocoa, and coffee. A corresponding infrastructural reinvention has included a jet airport in Canouan, the Rabbaca bridge, a proliferation of low- and middle-income homes, the Modern Medical Diagnostic Complex, the Windward and Leeward highways and the Argyle International Airport.
Simultaneously, we grew our economy, reduced inequality, improved our healthcare apparatuses, strengthened our social safety nets, and slashed indigence, poverty and undernourishment. Of course, our progress has not been linear. We have suffered setbacks and encountered obstacles, from natural disasters to the debilitating global economic and financial crisis. The developmental challenges that we face remain numerous and formidable. But we are undaunted, and God is Good.
Vincentians better off
The fact is that the average Vincentian in 2020 is better educated, better compensated, better protected, and better equipped to access and take advantages of emerging opportunities in our rapidly-changing world, than the average Vincentian of the same age when we began our economic transformation two decades ago. Our economy is growing. Taxes are lower. Wages are higher. There are record numbers of Vincentians with a job. School and hospital funding are at record levels. Social safety nets are ever more robust. And the Budget is stronger.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is indisputably on the right track. We have made real progress. Our country is stronger than it was in 2000 or 2010. But we know that the job is not done. The task of development is never complete, and it is ever more precarious in the context of a Small Island Developing State on the frontlines of climate change, the neighbourhood of a hegemon, and the periphery of the global economy, and quite vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a global political disorder and a profound unfairness of the globalised economy.
ULP: a clear vision going forward
Budget 2020 considers our history, our triumphs and our challenges in charting a transformative path forward for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. That path is bold and ambitious, building upon the strong foundation that we have built since 2001 and strengthened after batterings from external disasters – both natural and manmade. The limitations upon us are real but possibilities exist for the further enhancement of our sustainable development.
The progressive 2020 Vision of this government is clear, coherent and comprehensive. We recognize that ours is not the only developmental strategy, but we believe that it is the right one for our times, our country and our people. We reject austerity. We reject the crass commercialisation of our citizenship, and the race to the bottom of passport sales. We take note of, but not instruction from, institutions, indices and metrics that measure not progress, but our fealty to neoliberal orthodoxy.
Our measures of development are people-centred, and rooted in Vincentian history and experience. We count the rising numbers of educated, employed and home-owning citizens. We tally the dwindling numbers of poor, indigent and hungry. We quantify investments to make us more resilient, improve our infrastructure, and diversify our economy. We weigh the ways that youth and women are empowered, and that elderly and vulnerable are supported. We celebrate business growth, and we link sustainable use of our landscape, seascape, people and the instruments of our sovereignty to the interest of our people’s humanisation.
The Naysayers
Of course, there will be dissenters and detractors. Ours is a robust democracy. We will consider constructive critiques and adopt good ideas as our own, in the interest of national development. But there will also be rising cacophony of negativity from the propagandists and opportunists who see every step forward through the prism of their own narrow self interest. Those naysayers will proclaim that Budget 2020 is unrealisable. They will critique serious developmental proposals with the vacuous taunts of the primary school yards. But we are comforted that they are the same naysayers who said the Argyle International Airport was impossible; the Rabbaca Bridge was impossible; the Education Revolution was impossible; and the Security Council was impossible.
They will once again trot out their clichéd pronouncements of pessimism. Let them talk. We will work. They will be heard but not heeded. Their negativity will be but a raindrop in the ocean of our optimism, ambition and hope. Because we know that our country is heading in the right direction. We know that we are blessed with visionary, experienced and compassionate leadership.
And we know that we are home to an enterprising, creative and hardworking Vincentian people, who have always faced challenges with resolve, with faith in God, and with an unshakeable optimism that we can accelerate this procesof economic transformation for the benefit of all.
Let us continue to build a better Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Let us Lift SVG Higher….
1 Comment
The real problem is that we no longer live in a true democracy, even our leader was stripped of his prize for democracy.
The education revolution is a fraud on the people of SVG, a World Bank and EU set of schemes. Taken and re-labeled as the education revolution. Every country in the Caribbean had the same deal but did not re-label it, they just got on and used the money and did a better job of educating their people than happened under the ULP fraudsters. In SVG half the boy children drop out of secondary education, many leave school unable to read and write. The ministry of education have lowered the bar for standards of examinations to such a degree we are pumping out dunces with exam results that claim they are genius’s.
As for lifting SVG higher, that can only be trusted now to the NDP. The ULP have had 20 years to experiment and have failed dismally. Election promises which this is, are worthless as we have seen in the last four elections. The lies dressed up in false promises, the bribery, the election fraud, we just do not want any more of it.
Yes the bridge and the airport were an achievement but there have been many more failures, broken promises, and downright fraud on the minds of the ignorant among us.
We have become a nation of scroungers and UN vote vendors, with lying ULP politicians emanating from the very top of our leadership.
The original fiasco at Buccament was directly caused by the ULP failures. There will be many more failures in the tourist sector because of the family style operation in doing deals with people. The Gonsalves/Francis dynasty creation.
No national accounts published for coming up five years, hidden losses and hidden financial transactions.
The ULP has chosen on many occasions to operate outside the terms of the constitution.
SVG we all are fed up with the ULP, the Gonsalves, the dynasty. We want you gone at the next election.
It’s really time for a change, and this may be the last chance to save ourselves from a Venezuelan style crash of everything we treasure, what our ancestors worked for, gave there lives for.
Please people vote NDP.