Vincies should stop fearing ULP gov’t — Opposition Leader

President of the New Democratic Party Godwin Friday is urging Vincentians who feel they have been wronged by the Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration to forget about fear and vote the government out of office. 

He said that Vincentians should continue the dream of Milton Cato and others who led the nation into Independence and those before him who fought for the right to vote.

“How could we now in this day and age do any less than to take that sacred power that we have in the vote and to use it to change the government for the better? What is there to be afraid of?” Friday told an NDP village meeting in Diamond on Saturday. 

“Too many people are coming to tell me in this day and age, in these terrible circumstances in this country, people who have lost their jobs under this government and they are afraid to speak. What are you afraid of?” the opposition leader said.

“When you’ve lost your job, what are you afraid of?” he said.

Friday said he met recently a young woman who graduated from Community College 10 years ago but had not had a decent job because her family supports the NDP “and because for some reason, she cannot find favour with those who are in political power. 

“We have to change that. I know that. I meet all these people when I go all across the country, and it breaks my heart,” he said, adding that he knows that things can be better. 

“But it will only be better if we had the courage to use that vote,” he said, noting that NDP chairman and West Kingstown MP, Daniel Cummings spoke at the same meeting about the accumulative power of each person’s vote.

“… when election day comes, we have one vote, you now have to magnify that with yours and we come together to bring about the change,” Friday said.

“There is nothing to fear when you exercise that vote because when you do so, we will bring about the change that we so badly need in this country.”

The opposition leader said that the NDP has the plan and the people to turn things around in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“Our plan is to develop the economy of this country,” Friday said and noted the party’s emphasis on “the four pillars of the economy”, namely agriculture, tourism, the blue economy and the new economy (information technology, creative industries, etc.)

“But the other side don’t talk about it. They go away and when they come back they say, ‘Oh, ah borrow so much money.’ ‘Oh I make friends with this particular leader somewhere else, and they gave me so much money.’ 

“All of this stuff, you have to pay back most of it. But the point of the matter is, where are all the people in this process? Where are the farmers? Where are the fisherfolk? Where are the people, the small businesses?” Friday said.

“Why are they not the ones who are developing our country? Why do we have to bring people in from all over the Caribbean even just to build a building somewhere? Whether it’s in Diamond here down in Buccama?” he said in an apparent reference to the state-owned Holiday Inn, and the privately-owned Sandals Resort.

“Where are the people in this process? Why are we being excluded from what is ours as if we are bystanders in our own country? We have to change that around. It’s only when we change that, that we are going to have development in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Friday said, adding that that is his plan.

“That is a plan of the New Democratic Party to bring that about.”