By Unity Labour Party
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.
The modern, competitive, many-sided post-colonial economy, has as its central features the following: (1) An abundant supply of skilled labour priced at a competitive level within the changing context of the international division of labour; (2) a high, or hugely enhanced, level of appropriately applied science and technology in the production and distribution of goods and services; (3) competitiveness in the national, regional and global market places for our goods and services, save and except for some limited special niches, in an era where “preferential market treatment” is a thing of the past; (4) a governance apparatus of responsiveness to the people’s concerns and responsibility to the people; (5) a foreign relations framework which is independent, non-aligned, and efficacious, and distinctively anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-hegemonic.
Energy and will, vision and skill in practice
All the big transformative projects and initiatives of the ULP government were vehemently opposed or rubbished by the opposition NDP, including: The Argyle International Airport; the Modern Port in Kingstown; the Education Revolution; the Modern Medical and Diagnostic Centre; the Rabacca Bridge; the Sir Vincent Beache Stadium for Athletics and Football; the modern Arnos Vale Cricket Stadium; the state-owed Holiday Inn Express and Suites; the successful Housing Initiatives and Programmes, including the no-down payment for housing mortgages at the state-owned National Commercial Bank/BOSVG for public servant, teachers, and police officers; the modern Acute Care Hospital at Arnos Vale; the proposed modern city for Arnos Vale; and SVG’s successful bid to sit on the UN Security Council and its holding of the Presidency of CELAC.
Let us take, for example, the energy and will, vision and skill required by a leader to ensure the building of the Argyle International Airport. For 50 years before, politicians of all stripes promised to build an international airport on St. Vincent. If it were easy to be done, someone would have done it before. Vincentians, at home and abroad, longed for it but they settled in their minds that it was an impossible dream. But Comrade Ralph and the ULP thought that the realization of this dream is at hand.
At first, Comrade Ralph explored possible financing from traditional entities: The Caribbean Development Bank; the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Union; and the governments of the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom — our traditional allies. They all thought that the Comrade was crazy; they all thought that he was “a fabled man from the La Mancha tilting at windmills.” He never gave up on the international airport at Argyle becoming a reality. So, he and his team conceived a creative alternative financing framework: A Compact of the Willing, globally, to build it.
Accordingly, he visited umpteenth countries, knocked on dozens of doors, and spoke to dozens of leaders. He put together an improbable coalition of countries which assisted in accordance with their means and extent of solidarity: Cuba (under Fidel and Raul); Venezuela (under Chavez and Maduro); Taiwan (under Presidents Chen and Ma); Trinidad and Tobago (under Patrick Manning); Mexico (under President Fox); Turkey (under Erdogan); Iran (under President Ahmadinejad); Libya (under Muammar Ghaddafi); Georgia (under President Saakashvili); Austria (under the Social Democrats). Financial support came, too, from the CARICOM Development Fund, and Vincentians at home and in the diaspora. Locally, we were creative with some resources from the National Insurance Services, the First Caribbean Bank, and the local branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia (utilising credit facilities of the Export-Import financing from Canada to finance the Airport Tower). We established the International Airport Development Company (IADC) under the leadership of a talented Vincentian, Dr. Rudy Matthias, to build the airport; we founded the state-owned National Properties company as an important plank for airport financing. After the airport (aerodrome and terminal building) was constructed, we sought and obtained loans through the Export-Import financing mechanisms of the governments of the USA and the United Kingdom. At every stage we engaged the regulatory body, the Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority (ECCAA).
For starters, we had to move two mountains and two sizeable hills; fill four valleys; span a stream and a river; put in sea and river defences; remove and cause to be built elsewhere 140 middle-and-upper-middle income houses; remove a small hotel and two guest houses/apartment buildings; remove a church and a cemetery and cause them to be built elsewhere; remove and secure the historic petroglyphs of the Callinago and Garifuna.
Through all this and more, the NDP and their fellow-travelers opposed us; traduced us; vilified Comrade Ralph in and out of Parliament; mocked him as a man fit for the mental asylum; conspired against him with the vilest and even criminal falsehoods; petitioned foreign entities not to support the Comrade and his alleged “airport madness”; accused the Comrade falsely of corruption on the airport project; and so forth. Amidst all this bile, anger, falsehoods, conspiracies, and more, against Comrade Ralph and the airport project, he never wavered, he was never uncertain. Never has a political leader been so pilloried for doing a transformative good for his country. Lorraine Friday averred, dismissively, that in building a beautiful, high-quality airport, that the Comrade had “champagne taste but mauby pocket.” One week before the airport opened in February 2017, Friday in a most unpatriotic and stupid act, wrote to ECCAA to stop the opening on spurious grounds; he was mightily ignored.
The airport project cost EC$750 million to build, including grants, in-kind assistance and loans, all accounted for; today we owe under EC$200 million.
A similar opposition barrage against the Comrade and the ULP government was evident on all the other transformative capital projects, including from foreign investors such as those for the massively important Sandals Resort, and the Rainforest Fish Processing Complex at Calliaqua.
Towards a sixth term
A political novice, and raging opportunist, currently in the NDP has screamed hysterically as an infantile schoolboy that “Ralph can’t even run a single”. Why should he when he has the biggest six to hit — a sixth consecutive term. Only one general dey inna de yard!
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Reading this has yet again confirmed to me that the government and the pm is out of touch and down right blind to the damage they have done to this country and people. I will give you the last good piece of advice anyone might ever give you Ralph “go home while you still can, know when to throw in the towel” you know how to manipulate vincentians too well and you continue to do so. You say that the opposition members don’t have merit and you use other words to describe them, this is a clear indication that you living in denial. This country needs to be redeemed from your grip.
The current PM surely gives a new meaning to the term “Gaslighting”; and he is doing it worse than Nicolas Maduro his comrade in South America. Come around and brag about his accomplishments even as unemployment is above 40%. While the price of Food and Groceries are through the roof for SVG. Despite him having a deal for Venezuelan petroleum, gas fares going through the roof and he asking fuel tax for electricity. Does this happen in other places? PM Ralph Gonsalves time has passed even though he behaves like he doesn’t even know it. He keeps pretending he has the mental acuity of a young man. Somebody else got to be running the country; and he is a marionette. Talk about Gaslighting.
The author quite skillfully outlined the many achievements of the Ulp. However, the many ills or sins that plague the country was never mentioned as a reminder of Trumpism in action.
The Ulp given its audacity to sanitize twenty five years in power that left a legacy that become a burdensome for the average citizen.To live an ordinary life is becoming more and more difficult.
The ULP regime is disrespectful and disingenuous at best by trying to make us believe otherwise. I see a trend here, the great Donald Trump once said, “if you tell a lie long enough you ought to be believed “.The ULP has embarked on a series of half truths as Donald did.
The ULP regime destroyed Agriculture as we once know it. The ineptitude of the Ulp regime destroyed the once thriving banana industry. An industry in the zenith of its existence added 200 million to the gnp. This created a burden to farmers who are unable to make a living from farming.
The national debt which which is also a legacy of the Ulp is estimated to be 2.5 billion. Every Vincentians owes approximately $30,000 of this amount. Future generations will be responsible for the repayments. The interest to service the national debt is a staggering 150 million yearly and can potentially stifles economic growth.
The crime rate is is another indicator of the ULP failure. When the Ulp came to power . The crime rate was on an average 3 homicide per year. Presently its hovering around an annual average of at least 45 . Last year the homicide was as high as 55.
The feeder roads are problematic, in order to express their disgust with the road network, commuters have occasionally withdrew their services in protest. The litany of the Ulp failures are so long that it will take a blind not to see.
A politician recently said that St Vincent is 30 years behind st Lucia in terms of economic development is a truism.
The ULP time has come, it is akin to an expired good that does nothing but compromised the heath of the consumer if consumed. As Trump once said if you tell a lie long enough it will be believed. The ULP time has expired and does not deserve six in a row.
This is your litigating evaluation? Well mr Gonsalves this is your oxymoron of a defense. This is your appendix to the despicable inditement for us to litigate? What do I mean? Well if we put black marks over everything that would incriminate you we would still have enough facts to not vote for you. Mr Gonsalves don’t get me started on what you are exposed to?
Here we go again, it’s the levity man is action.
Suffering from Vertigo? Literally totally old school.
Why u guys wasting time reading rubbish., tell dem go speak wid the lady from the UK about their experience with the death of their relative in de rottening down hospital…. . hope she tell the man they have in London about it and all others who she knew planning to come.