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The EC$700 million airport has missed several completion deadlines since 2011. (Photo: Friends of Argyle Int' Airport/Facebook)
The EC$700 million airport has missed several completion deadlines since 2011. (Photo: Friends of Argyle Int’ Airport/Facebook)
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The views expressed herein are those of the writer and do not represent the opinions or editorial position of I-Witness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].

C-Ben David has written a number of ground shattering opinion pieces about the Argyle Airport project that should wake up the Vincentian diaspora. I have tried to wake them for years without much success, so let’s hope that David is more successful.

The most recent piece, “Airport Envy Vincy-Style” is just as far-reaching and spectacular, and no one should take what he says lightly.

Related:

David, if I may, I would like to offer some more fuel to the fire.

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If we compare a Vincentian who lives in America who can fly from a choice of several US airports directly to Barbados, then onward to SVG by LIAT, why would they fly around internally in the US looking for the airport from which the one flight a week will be leaving, flying non-stop directly to Argyle.

There will only ever be at the most one flight a week, or perhaps, but doubtfully, even two aircraft flying direct to SVG from the US in a week.

So, isn’t it most obvious that travelers will still have to fly to Barbados, or St. Lucia, or Grenada, or Trinidad? Not everyone will want to fly on the same day, but at least flying to those destinations they will have a choice of more departure days and routes by which to get to SVG, and a wider choice of U.S. airports to fly from. They may as well change aircraft in the Caribbean once as change aircraft several times in the US.

This airport will be, and already is, Ralph Gonsalves’ folly.

Everyone knows in their hearts the truth. It doesn’t matter what rubbish they present us with, we are heading for a billion dollar airport, with a two billion dollar debt.

It has caused us to lose our national bank and has damaged our NIS. It has seen the sale of all our prime land stocks. It has seen a hospital with no drugs or dressing, etc. The family silver has been sold and we are broke. It has seen land taken for the airport from the landowners and seven years later 150 people still haven’t been paid for their land.

Then as a slap in the face for good measure, an old bag containing a million US dollars in cash turned up in Kingstown and a whole lot of strange things began to happen. The money was taken to the NCB and left there to be changed into EC dollars and collected again. The bank got cold feet and asked that it be taken away again; they decided not to do that transaction. But instead of calling the police and notifying the Financial Intelligence Unit, they just allowed it to be collected and taken away. Then what happened next cost a young female whistleblower her job at the bank. She reported and gave evidence that showed that a whole series of transactions took place with ULP ministers’ families turning up at the bank with what some would describe as large amounts of US dollars in cash to exchange for EC dollars or to deposit. Again no questions of where it came from, etc. Supermarkets and stores saw a big leap in US currency in their cash registers. I have heard it asked if this was money donated for the airport from the diaspora. I have heard people say the Cubans gave it, or Chavez gave it. Everyone wants to see evidence of where it came from. Did it happen before? Has it happened again since? Will it happen again in the future? The seed of doubt has been sown and the people want to know the truth lest they think the worst, and you cannot blame them for that.

All Vincentians at home and abroad have been lied to, hoodwinked and fooled by all the old talk and silly rhetoric about coalitions of the willing, other people, other countries paying the bills. Every man or woman of this world with only half a brain knows and understands that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Yet many Vincentians have very foolishly been convinced that the lunch is free, and they are willing to believe that a free dinner and supper is on the way too.

We have had a bunch of Cubans doing the work of Vincentians. It’s taken them ten years to do a two- or three-year project. Again this goes back to the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Remember when I wrote this?

Ten 400-seater jets a day at Argyle. Possible?

And, more recently, this?

Sod the Vincentian Constitution

Peter Binose

The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].

2 replies on “In support of C-Ben David’s ‘Airport Envy Vincy-Style’”

  1. C. ben-David says:

    Many thanks for your comments.

    Too bad so many of our people are not conscious enough to understand or apply their implications not only to AIA but to their daily lives. To bad we don’t have an opposition unwilling or unable to do the very easy research you, I, and others have done to expose AIA for the hoax that it is.

  2. David, I think it is better we say it as independent people. I am not a NDP member, I am certainly not a member of the ULP. I can say or write whatever I want without having to get instructions or bollockings for writing things that they did not like.

    All these people who come here and write absolute nonsense like Vinciman or Horace if you like, they all write what they are told. Those kind of people are paid to say something is right when it in fact is wrong. They will even say white is black and black is white for the protection of the ULP against right which may harm them.

    Remember when they found the caterers over invoicing and working a flanker with someone in the office, not another word. That was another clear case of making wrong right to protect the ULP.

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