GETTING GOOD THINGS DONE
In uplifting our lives, living, and production, it is essential to get good things done. This is true in every area of human activity by people from all walks of life. In the matters of government and politics leadership is vital in getting good things done. Top quality political leadership is what drives transformative change, in the people’s interest, to better immeasurably the lives and living of the people in any nation. To be sure, there are persons elected to top leadership positions who tinker here and there and manage this or that little thing, but nothing much changes for the better; they are really not fit to lead at any time, especially challenging times of times of urgency. To do mighty things, in the people’s interest, you need a transformative leader in the mould of Comrade Ralph.
ULP View: Leadership: Energy and Will, Vision and Skill
Fri, Oct 18, 2024
GETTING GOOD THINGS DONE
In uplifting our lives, living, and production, it is essential to get good things done. This is true in every area of human activity by people from all walks of life. In the matters of government and politics leadership is vital in getting good things done. Top quality political leadership is what drives transformative change, in the people’s interest, to better immeasurably the lives and living of the people in any nation. To be sure, there are persons elected to top leadership positions who tinker here and there and manage this or that little thing, but nothing much changes for the better; they are really not fit to lead at any time, especially challenging times of times of urgency. To do mighty things, in the people’s interest, you need a transformative leader in the mould of Comrade Ralph.
Admittedly, leadership alone cannot effect transformative change for the better, but it is the crucial driving force. The transformative leader, among other things, must function within a quality collective group of other leaders, bolstered by an effective organisation, and in tandem with an informed and supportive people. This is what you get with the ULP government.
To be transformative, as distinct from tinkering here and there, demands that the leader possess in abundance energy and will, vision and skill. These attributes contribute greatly to ensuring that the leader is a deliverer of “the goods”, alter the conditions of the “ancien regime”, build better and stronger sustainably, and in every material respect lift the country higher. A leader of energy and will, vision and skill, not only inspires the people but draws out of them that which is of high quality, goodness, and nobility; oft-times to draw out of them high quality, goodness, and nobility which they [the people] may not as yet know that they possess.
Leaders who are mere tinkerers, not propound thinkers and doers of mighty deeds, have no dynamic thrust; no depth, very shallow. They are instinctively conservative and not progressive; at best they manage, oft-times poorly, what exists; they are satisfied with stasis which leads inevitably to backwardness and suffering; indeed, such leaders are poor in every way; they are invariably lazy and eat the bread of idleness; their minimalist actions and grave inactions invite political instability; they tend to look forward to a past that never was, an illusion which raises to the lips a cup of bitterness and gall; in short, they engender a country of “look behind”, a future that is behind them. It all ends in grief, pain, and suffering for the people. This is the leadership type that you find in someone like Lorraine Friday in the opposition New Democratic Party.
COMRADE RALPH: THE TRANSFORMATIVE LEADER
Comrade Ralph is a transformative leader and deliverer of better, by far; he has demonstrated the requisite qualities of leadership of the highest order; currently, in our challenged times of urgency he shows it mightily; and his energy and will, vision and skill ensure a continuation of the transformation and consolidation for the better, in the future. And of all time, only the future is ours to desecrate; to avoid the desecration of the future, our nation requires the quality, ongoing transformative leadership offered by the Comrade and his team, buttressed by a quality organisation of the state administration delivering good governance, and in communion with the people.
The alternative provided by the opposition NDP is weak, lazy, vacillating, visionless, unskilled and inexperienced in the art and science of governance. They constitute a brigade of “grumpy old men”, Friday, Leacock and Cummings, for example; an awful team of little or no merit or promise, no coherent or uplifting policies or programmes, backward to the core, leading to a dead-end. The NDP’s leader is NOT possessed of a sufficiency of energy and will, vision and skill; and he has no enduring link to the people; a Canadian, through his voluntary act, with his Canadian passport “proudly” in his front pocket, and his Vincentian passport merely in his back pocket. Inside of the bowels of the NDP, there are more than mutterings that Lorraine Friday is not up to the leadership task-at-hand. He is not even in charge of his party which consists of a rabble of wannabe electoral elites stuffed with opportunism, personal gripes and complaints, vainglorious personal pursuits, malice, anger, bile, and a thirst for power; they hunger for revenge against ULP leaders, activists, and supporters.
TRANSFORMATION FOR THE BETTER
Since the dawn of the 21st century, nearly 24 years ago, the ULP government under the transformative leadership of Comrade Ralph has successfully embarked on a quest to alter, fundamentally, for the better, in the people’s interest, the inherited colonial/amended colonial economy which existed from 1763 (the year which marks British colonial conquest and settlement of exploitation) to the end of the 20th century (the terminal period of the NDP regime) — a total of 237 years. The ULP’s quest has been, since 2001, to build a modern, competitive, many-sided, post-colonial economy which is at once national, regional, and global; every word here is pregnant with real meaning. In a mere generation, the ULP has altered the economic paradigm of the previous 237 years, for the better. That paradigm shift, a transformative process, is still ongoing, is being refined, and consolidated in fresh hope, faith, and love, daily, in the people’s interest. It has been, and is, an amazing journey, unprecedented in our country, and with dazzling speed and effectiveness, despite many challenges, and contradictions, arising from the process itself, the nature and unfairness of the global political economy, and the vulnerabilities of a small island developing state, amidst its strengths and possibilities.
The colonial/amended colonial economy revolved around the following critical foundations: (i) An unlimited supply of cheap, unskilled labour; (2) a low level of applied science and technology in the production processes; (3) subsidies at home and preferential market treatment for exports, mainly agricultural products (centrally at various times: sugar, arrowroot, cotton, banana); (4) a governance apparatus largely unresponsive to the people’s concerns; and (5) foreign relations tied unequivocally to the colonial inheritance and modern imperialism/hegemony