Warrant Officer Ivan Bertie O’Neal, who spent three years at Oxford Brookes University, England, reading for his BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance and Economics, very strongly contends that neither the NDP nor ULP Regimes have the education, training or ability in Accounting and Finance to move our country out of deep poverty and destitution, and into prosperity.
If you carry out an analysis of forty-three years of independence from the United Kingdom, you will see that no political party in SVG has been able to produce an Annual Budget with a fiscal surplus. They have been borrowing very large sums of money to pay Public Debt – essentially, we have had 43 years of governments digging a hole to fill a hole.
For decades, successive white-led NDP and ULP governments have introduced and upheld laws and policies that favour the super-rich, white foreigners in SVG, and discriminate against the indigenous people of SVG. Our country’s black majority has been controlled by laws that propagate white wealth and black poverty, white economic supremacy and black destitution.
The ULP Regime is giving away more revenue in tax and customs duty exemptions to the white super-rich in Mustique and Canouan and to Taiwan on Fish tax, than the ULP Regime puts into the Treasury. Read the Mustique Act No 48 of 2002 and the SVG High Sea Fish Act 2001 for further information. Tax and Customs Duty Exemptions for the super-rich should be discontinued immediately.
The journey taken by SVG since 2001 – under the ULP regime – has been nothing short of a remarkable level of incompetence and poor leadership. There are so many more and bigger challenges confronting our people and country, because of the acute vulnerabilities we are exposed to, due to the high levels of poverty, crime and unemployment.
SVG is in such a bad state that we face exceptional circumstances, and so, need different and better leadership if we are to overcome. Since 2001, we have had leadership that has lacked vision, creativity, innovation and a willingness to deviate from tourism, which is pulling our country down.
The ULP regime has failed young people. All they have to offer young people is a jail or a life of unemployment.
Opposition leader Friday has suggested that, if NDP get into government, they would allow Citizenship by Investment in SVG. Citizenship by Investment is the granting of citizenship status to individuals (and immediate family members) if they make a specified and quantifiable financial investment in a country.
Citizenship by Investment is a bad idea and the type of thing someone would suggest who has no proper economic strategy, and no idea about how to move our country forward and create prosperity for our people.
Citizenship by Investment is not sustainable, because once you sell off the country, nothing is left. We must protect and preserve our country for our children and grandchildren. Beware of the NDP’s plan for Citizenship by Investment in SVG. It is dangerous for our people and country – very dangerous!
A Green economy is the only solution to create mass employment in SVG and give our people jobs. Unemployment stands unacceptably high at about 50%. For many people it is hard to get a job, simply because there are few jobs around.
A Green government would create thousands of new jobs in new factories, in renewable energy industries, in the construction of our own university, in the operation of a deep sea tuna fishing and fish processing industry, building pre-schools, in a water exporting industry, and create vibrant small business and manufacturing sectors and other areas of the new Green economy.