The issue

In March 2001 when the ULP was first elected to government, a first-time 18-year-old voter then is now 41 years old.  He or she would have known how things were bad in 2001 for young people, the poor, the working folks, and the disadvantaged.  He or she now knows the immense progress our country has made under the ULP government.

The first-time, 18-year-old voter in the next elections due in December 2025 would have been born in 2007; it is unlikely that he or she paid any serious attention to politics or government before he or she was 10 years old in 2017.  Thus, he or she is unlikely to know anything about the NDP’s poor governance between 1984 and 2001 or the excellent years of ULP governance from 2001 to 2017; thereafter, this young voter knows from personal knowledge the tremendous advancement for SVG shaped or caused by the policies of the ULP government.

Cleaning up NDP mess

The ULP’s twin-task on attaining office was to clean-up the mess left by the NDP government and to implement appropriate policies to develop SVG in every material particular.  Indeed, some of the NDP mess is still being cleaned up; the mess was piled high and was deeply rooted in many respects.

The mess left by the NDP government included:

(i) General poverty of 37 percent of the population; indigence/ “dirt poor” poverty of 26 percent of population; undernourishment at 22 percent of the population.

(ii) Mass unemployment: Only 30,000 active registrants at NIS out of a labour force of 55,000.

(iii) Annual per capita income (Gross Domestic Product) at under EC $8,000 per year.

(iv) Only 4 of every 10 persons who were 12 years of age were in secondary schools; only 4 primary school teachers in the entire educational system had university degrees; only a handful of students were at university; only 500 students or so, in total, were in the four divisions of the SVG Community College; the Public Library was placed in a small cubby hole in Middle Street consequent upon the disrepair of the Carnegie Building.  Education was going nowhere.

(v) Terrible health system: Only 70 percent of households had pipe-borne in their homes; garbage collection and disposal were limited only to Kingstown and its immediate environs; there were unhealthy garbage dumps in full view and foul smell at Arnos Vale, Bequia, and Union Island; there were no polyclinics and no Modern Medical Diagnostic Centre; hospital services were run-down; there were no MRI or CT-Scan facilities; there was an antiquated x-ray facility at Kingstown only.

(vi) Poor housing. NDP government did not build one housing unit for the poor or marginalised in nearly 17 years in office; the Housing and Development Corporation was a mere collector of old debts.

(vii) Disaster preparedness was basically non-existent.  There was no NEMO.

(viii) Sporting and cultural facilities were run-down or non-existent.  Victoria Park was a dilapidated dump; Peace Mo was ramshackle and unusable; no developed facility at Arnos Vale; limited sporting facilities and playing fields nationwide.

(ix) Parliament met with infrequency; the Office of the Director of Audit was a veritable dump; only a few construction firms won public works’ contracts; the laws on the Director of Audit, Financial Administration, and Public Procurement were underdeveloped and anachronistic; public accountability through the relevant institutions was sadly lacking; the Office of the DPP was inadequately housed and poorly staffed; the Attorney General or Solicitor General acted as DPP for inordinate lengths of time.

(x) The entire Windward Highway, the entire Vigie Highway, and the Leeward Highway from Hospital Road to Layou were in near-total disrepair; so, too, were most of the secondary roads and feeder roads; bridges all over SVG were falling apart.

(xi) Official corruption, money-laundering and drug trafficking were widespread; so much so that the British government refused the NDP government debt relief under the Commonwealth Debt Initiative because of the extent of drug trafficking, official corruption, poverty, and uncontrollable money-laundering.

(xii) The National Commercial Bank (fore-runner to BOSVG) was in disastrous straits: The Bank was severely under-capitalised; its bad loans were over 20 percent of its total loan portfolio; it received a bad “qualified report” from the independent auditors for the years 1998, 1999, 2000; its asset base was small and heavily compromised; it was used as a veritable piggy bank by “NDP high-ups”; and the Ottley Hall Marina -Union Island Projects’ loans and security offended every basic banking precept and put the Bank in jeopardy of collapse; and workers at the Bank had no pension plan, as existed in all other commercial banks in SVG.

(xiii) The Ottley Hall project was a disaster and indebted the country in the sum of over EC $180 million for an asset — at arm’s length transaction — was valued at EC $13.5 million.

(xiv) State-owned entities such as the National Lottery, VINLEC, the Marketing Board Supermarket, Input Warehouse, Public Works, Public Health, Botanic Gardens were all performing badly.

(xv) Public buildings (schools, police stations, clinics, etc.) were in a condition of deplorable disrepair. 

(xvi) Workers were disadvantaged in every material particular — wages, severance payments, etc.

(xvii) No international airport, no Rabacca Bridge.

(xviii) Selling of passports and citizenship.

TO BE CONTINUED