Opposition Leader Godwin Friday says his New Democratic Party is “desperate” to be elected into office but not for selfish reasons.
He noted the series of “village meetings” that the party has been holding across the country although the general election, widely expected to be held by November, has not been announced as yet.
“… And you’ll ask me, ‘Well, why are you guys working so hard?’ We are desperate. Of course, we are desperate but not to form government for ourselves,” Friday said at a village meeting in Rockies on Monday.
“We are desperate to rescue this country from the malaise, from the decline, from the dereliction of duty, the neglect that you have had under this present administration. Never mind what they tell you,” the opposition leader said.
Friday is slated to lead the NDP into a second general election since becoming its president in 2017.
For the first time since 1998, the NDP won the popular vote in the 2020 general election, even as it lost by one vote, North Leeward, a constituency it held from 2010 to 2020.
The NDP has been in opposition since March 2001, ending its 16-year hold on the reins of power.
“Every individual who is listening to my voice here tonight, ask yourself this question. Ask about your conditions. How it has been for you? Are you doing well now?” Friday told the audience, which included viewers of the social media broadcast.
“Ask your family members if they feel that they are doing well now. Ask your neighbours and your friends. Do you think we are doing well? Are we doing better now than we were 5, 10, 15 years ago?” the opposition leader said.
“Do you feel like the country is going in the right direction? Ask yourself that question, and if you say yes to all those things, which I know the vast majority of the people will not, then you will say, alright, they deserve to be there.”
Friday urged listeners to forget about political parties and ask themselves, ‘Is this the best that we can do in St. Vincent and the Grenadines? Is this what Milton Cato and all those people who dreamed about the future of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as an independent country … had in mind?’
“I mean, look around. The roads are falling apart. Crime is out of control,” he said, adding that the roads that the government started to repair are yet to be completed, as is the case in Edinboro.
He said work on Bluff Road in Bequia was just abandoned. “They just stop. It’s like you’re asking, Well, what happened? You forget what you’re supposed to do,” the opposition leader said.
“They have Girls’ High School. They start, they can’t finish it. Thomas Saunder Secondary School, they even started yet. I mean, what is this government doing? That is what we have to do to take stock. You ask yourself, can we as a people seriously, consign ourselves to another five years of this level of inaction, of neglect, of lack of imagination?”
Friday said that at the same time, the government rubbishes every idea that the NDP comes up to improve the lives of the people, only to turn around and implement it years later.
“Whenever we talk about something new, of some plan to bring relief to the people of this country, they can’t even concede that this is possible, desirable and worthwhile. They just simply dismiss it out of hand,” the opposition leader said.
He said this was the case when the ULP dismissed as political opportunism the proposal by the NDP to reduce interest rates on student loans to 4.5%.
However, in the 2024 Budget, the government reduced the interest rate to 4.5%.
“All of a sudden we can afford it now but they didn’t have enough imagination to do it,” Friday said.
He said the NDP also proposed expanding the Youth Empowerment Service (YES) programme to assign interns to private sector businesses for one year with the government and the business sharing the stipend. Instead of paying the intern below the minimum wage.
“Within a year after the election, they come with a programme. They call it ON-SITE. It’s exactly the same thing that we talked about, except ours was more imaginative because we said that the private sector would be a part of it, and they will be there for a year, not six months,” Friday said.
He said the ULP also opposed the NDP’s citizenship by investment proposal talking about
the dignity of the passport and the sovereignty of the nation.
“But they’re selling land. They sell the land to foreigners. What is more emblematic of national sovereignty than the land itself,” Friday said.
He said that citizenship obtained through investment can be revoked but land ownership enjoys constitutional protection.
“So, it’s hypocritical of them to talk about it in that way. But I always say, their bread buttered on three sides, most people in this country catching hell and I want to bring relief to them,” Friday said.
“So, when we are talking about taking stock, you have to keep that in mind. And I know that the question I posed earlier, … ‘Where we are now?’ the conclusion would be that the country is on autopilot. We’re not going forward. Don’t let them mamaguy you and tell you otherwise.”
Friday spoke to of the NDP’s plans to develop the economy with an emphasis on agriculture, the blue economy, the new economy
“Those are the things I will focus on, and I promise you, within the first term of an NDP government, you will see a dramatic turnaround in those areas, because we have put a lot of thought into it.
“And again, it’s not rocket science. You just have to have to believe. You have to believe in the farmers. You have to believe in the fisherfolk. You have to believe in our young people. You have to believe in our local business people,” Friday said.
“You can’t get everything from outside. You can’t go and beg and borrow for everything. And then when you want people to come build or make anything, they gotta bring them in all the time. And the rest of our people sitting around as though we are spectators in our own development.”
Friday said the people have to be “an essential part of that process. That is a difference in our government. We believe in people, we believe they have to play a part in their own development, and we believe that they’re capable of doing so.
“And where there are shortfalls, we will put in place the means by a proper training institution to provide skills to our young people so that they can match what education they may have gotten in the community college or even at university with a proper skill that they can learn here in a properly developed institution that provides different grades of qualifications to our people.”