By *Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to CRITICISM. There are two kinds of criticism. There is the honest kind, which every government needs and which A View from the Outside will always encourage and there is the other kind, the kind we have heard and read rather a lot of in recent weeks about the new government’s fuel relief measures and about the cruise port memorandum of understanding. What we are hearing and reading is not honest criticism. It is selective outrage, mischief and in some cases blatant hypocrisy.
We begin our view this week with fuel and electricity. Prices at the petrol pump have gone up. Electricity bills are climbing. Nobody disputes that and nobody should pretend it does not hurt ordinary households across St. Vincent and the Grenadines. To dispute such would be dishonest.
But here is the part the critics of the government’s fuel and electricity relief programme leave out — this is a global crisis, not a Vincentian one. Since the war in the Middle East began, the price of Brent crude oil has jumped from around US$72 a barrel to nearly US$120 at its peak, a rise of more than 50%. The World Bank has warned that 2026 will bring the biggest surge in energy prices in four years. Attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of the world’s seaborne crude oil passes, have produced what economists and political analysts are calling the largest oil supply crisis on record in the world.
No government in St. Vincent and the Grenadines caused any of that, neither the former Unity Labour Party nor the current New Democratic Party. Priem Minister Dr. Godwin Friday and his team did not raise the price of petrol, of cooking gas, or of the diesel that generates electricity in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. What they are doing is bringing relief to Vincentians by implementing a 90-day emergency relief package. If you have not being paying attention, we on A View from the Outside will remind you. The emergency package includes a reduction of excise taxes and the customs service charge on imported petroleum products is being cut in half, with the Treasury absorbing roughly EC$1.90 per gallon to cap the price of gasoline. The customs service charge on cooking gas is being removed entirely and the customs service charges and excise taxes on diesel used for electricity generation will be removed as well. That is real revenue the government is giving up to put money back into the pockets of Vincentians — your pocket — during a global emergency.
Now, is the package perfect? Reasonable people can debate whether 90 days is long enough, or whether the relief reaches far enough down to those who need it most. That would be honest criticism, and we, on A View from the Outside, welcome that sort of critical debate. But that is not what is being heard in and around St. Vincent and the Grenadines and indeed coming from some Vincentians in the diaspora. What some are doing is blaming a government six months in office for the increase in the price of Brent crude oil caused by a war on the other side of the world.
What is even more disingenuous and hypocritical is that some of the loudest voices live in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, where petrol and electricity prices have soared for exactly the same reason. They are not writing to Ottawa or to Westminster, accusing those governments of causing the oil price crisis. They reserve that charge for the New Democratic Party government in St. Vincent and the Grenadines alone. We, on A View from the Outside, leave you to draw your own conclusion about why that might be the case. In fact an opinion by Kenrick Quashie published in iWitness News on June 8, entitled “Oh, how the tables have turned!” may provide some answers as to why.
Now to the bigger controversy, the cruise port. This past week, the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a memorandum of understanding with Global Ports Holding, the world’s largest cruise port operator, to begin exclusive negotiations on a 30-year concession for the Kingstown cruise terminal, with up to EC$250 million in phased investment.
Within hours, the outcries started. The critics cried that the government is selling the cruise port. St. Vincent is for sale. The Argyle international airport and the new seaport in Kingstown will be next. It is important to make this point as plainly as possible; a concession is not a sale. The two are entirely different legal creatures and the difference matters.
When you sell something, ownership passes to the buyer, permanently and for good. When a government grants a concession, ownership stays exactly where it is with the State, which means with you, the people of St Vincent and the Grenadines. The operator, in this case Global Ports Holding, receives the right to run the port, to invest in it and to earn revenue from it for a fixed period. In exchange, Global Ports Holding commits to spend its own money, up to EC$250 million, modernising a facility the Treasury of St. Vincent and the Grenadines cannot afford to modernise because of the financial mess in which the previous government left the economy of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. When the 30 years end, the cruise port, together with every improvement made to it, remains in Vincentian hands and under the arrangement as announced, ordinary Vincentians would be able to own 30% of the shares in the concession company itself.
This initiative by the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to bolster the economy is nothing new. It has been tried and tested. These waters are not uncharted. Global Ports Holding operates dozens of cruise ports around the world under this precise model. Antigua and Barbuda granted Global Ports Holding a 30-year concession for the port at St. John’s. The Bahamas granted Global Ports Holding a 25- year concession for Nassau’s Prince George Wharf, with an investment of a similar scale. No one seriously claims that Antigua sold its port or that the Nassau waterfront no longer belongs to Bahamians. To do so would be dishonest and misleading.
A further point of clarification is that what the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed this week with Global Ports Holding is a memorandum of understanding, not the concession itself. Negotiations have been opened but they have not concluded. This is where real scrutiny belongs. Diligent Vincentians will ask what the concession fees are. How much is the revenue share? What are the guarantees for Vincentian workers and vendors and what happens if the operator underperforms?
Those are the questions serious critics should be asking and we, on A View from the Outside encourage all Vincentians to ask those questions. Claiming that “the government sold the cruise port” is not one of them, because it is not true. In fact, the memorandum of understanding may never materialise into a final agreed concession. Vincentians can ask the previous administration about that. They signed many which never materialised into anything.
Then there is the argument that members of the current administration will not be alive in 30 years to see the benefit of the agreement. By that logic, no government should ever plant a tree, build a school or borrow to build a seaport or modern acute hospital all of which are things the previous administration did. In any event, the benefits of the agreement with Global Ports Holding will not wait 30 years to be realised. Construction jobs, increased cruise calls, business for taxi operators, vendors, tour guides and restaurants begin when the investment begins and the first phase alone is reported to be worth some EC$75 million.
Let us be honest about long-term plans. The previous administration borrowed heavily over 25 years for capital projects, some of them good and necessary projects, like the international airport and the seaport. Nobody asked then whether those leaders would live to see the loans repaid. Those debts will be carried by Vincentians not yet born; the metaphorical hook in the gill of Vincentians. If long-term plans and obligations were acceptable, then they cannot suddenly be scandalous now. That is the selective outrage we spoke about at the beginning: judging the same conduct by two different standards, depending on who sits in the seat of government.
We on A View from the Outside are not suggesting that the government should not be criticised. Please, by all means, criticise the government. Scrutinise the concession negotiations line by line. Press them hard on whether the relief package goes far enough. That is what citizens of a democracy will do and should do whoever is in government. But criticism built on a falsehood, that the government caused world oil prices to increase or that it sold or is selling the cruise port is not scrutiny. It is mischief and Vincentians, at home and abroad, deserve better than mischief dressed up as patriotism.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
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