Labour is not working for you

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Nov. 29, 2024)

“Without dissent, there can be no truth because truth emerges from a conflict of ideas and not from an imposition of ideas from one side or the other in a particular debate.” Lord Jonathon Sumption, a former member of the UK Supreme Court.

The government has a new slogan entitled “Labour is working”. Anyone who needs proof that this labour government is not working for most citizens must only read the party’s column published in the media last week. ULP’s shittiness is splattered all over the pages.

Don’t believe me? Here’s proof: “In SVG today, there is the lowest-ever unemployment, lowest-ever poverty, lowest-ever indigence, and lowest-ever homelessness. There is more work to be done in SVG than able-bodied and willing workers to do the available jobs.” 

No serious observer of Vincentian reality will opine that we have the lowest-ever anything except for political hygiene. Youth unemployment is over 40%, while four out of every 10 citizens live in poverty. Hope and optimism about the future are at an all-time low. Therefore, the person who scribbled this drivel is not only insulting our intelligence. Punchdrunk with power, the author has become accustomed to pissing on our collect heads and calling it showers of blessing. Enough!

The ULP, which has abandoned any pretence of decent governance, is now content with transactional arrangements of state affairs to ensure maximum effect as the elections draw nearer. There is a mad scramble to do everything at once, even as Gonsalves and his clansmen proclaim that the country does not have the manpower, equipment and human resource capacity to get it all done.  

The government is piling on projects to create a false sense that big things are happening so that its leader can beg for a sixth term with the infantile utterance that “man must finish way man start”. You would be damn stupid if you stayed in a verbally and physically abusive relationship.

The ULP column “Massive Changes for the Better St. Vincent” correctly declared the party’s intention. The closing subheading says Labour is working to a sixth term. The party wants to maintain power to continue to feather the nest of the leader and his big-shot friends. It wants to continue with its corrupt practices, stifle good governance, and hinder the emergence of democratic best practices.

But the people must not let them. The people must prepare to break the undistinguished spell that Gonsalves and his clansmen have on this country. The shelf life of the ULP government has long passed its due date. Anything less than this administration’s departure will be a betrayal of our youths, dependent children, and generations unborn.

Any leader who boasts that his borrowing/debt policy is intended to place a “hook in the gill” of the nation he rules is unfit to govern.  Clearly, he has signalled to the world that his utterances about sovereignty and independence are empty, meaningless bluster. Once he continues to suck on the honeycomb of power, to hell with the Albatros, a mounting debt burden ($3 billion and counting) placed on the nation.

Labour is working, says the ULP. This party is oblivious to the daunting problems citizens, especially the poor, unemployed and vulnerable, face each day. Three years ago, the Gonsalves regime imposed the evil and dreaded vaccine on the nation. Has the party leadership ever spared a thought for the daily suffering of the hundreds of people who were dismissed and lost their jobs and livelihoods following the enforcement of the draconian vaccine policy?

Labour says it’s working, but the country’s infrastructure is falling. Schools, police stations, clinics, and other public buildings are in a perpetual state of rot. A forest has overgrown the community centre at Penniston, while the all-suffering youth of Campden Park await the opening of the centre rebuilt more than five years ago.

Labour says it’s working, but the youths are not smiling. The grass on the playing fields is rarely cut, and too many hard courts are cracked.

Millions of dollars are earmarked for this venture and more millions for that project, yet on any given day, large groups of young men and women loiter on streets and in villages across the land. 

Over the last three years, the government has earmarked almost $300 million for road reconstruction and repairs. Yet people wait in vain for proof that the money is being spent because the roads remain festooned with deep craters and potholes.    

This labour government is probably the most anti-labour government since universal adult suffrage in 1951. Of all the banks, the government-owned BoSVG singularly refused to honour back pay obligations to its employees as mandated by the government-appointed Wages Council. Some of the poorest and most vulnerable state employees (daily paid) go for weeks without a salary, without even a murmur from state officials. Labour is not working. Labour is failing.

A working labour government will pay urgent attention to our exploding homicide and crime problem and do something meaningful to arrest the situation. Rather than describe police as angels, it must ensure that police officers respect and end the brutal treatment often meted out to those they swear to protect and serve. 

With the empty slogan, Labour is working, the government is banking on its demented notion that our people are loving, forgiving, and have short memories. With our words, actions, and votes, we owe it to ourselves to remember not to forget our overlords’ misdeeds. They are committed to buying the next election much like they bought the 2020 contest. Citizens must be up to the task. Up to the count of votes on election night, the mantra must be: “eat dem out, drink dem out and vote dem out.”

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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