By Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to the conduct of our national independence parade on Tuesday, with the view being that the handling of it was careless and that after 47 years, the one ceremony in our calendar that falls on the same date every single year ought to be the one we get right.
The prime minister delivered his first independence address since taking office. It was sobering, in some places enlightening and appropriate for the occasion. Much of what he said is things Vincentians know already, but repetition does no harm, so that Vincentians at home and abroad keep the dire state of this economy in the front of their minds.
The prime minister told Vincentians that our national debt stood at 113% of what the economy produces in a year and that on the present course it will reach 140% within four years. That candour must be difficult for a new government to admit. He said the deficit for 2025 was about 12% of GDP and rightly called it unsustainable.
He disclosed unpaid government bills of EC$178 million, EC$25 million of that owed to Vincentian suppliers and contractors. That’s EC$25 million owed to our own people, work done and not paid for. He said the government overdraft had gone beyond the EC$85 million limit set by Parliament and was operating illegally.
At one point, we, on a View from the Outside, thought what the prime minister was going to announce was the preliminary results of the promised forensic audit into the state of affairs in St. Vincent and the Grenadines between 2001 and 2025. It wasn’t. Vincentians are still awaiting that audit, 11 months into this government, and we on a View from the Outside will keep asking for it.
The prime minister announced a National Crime Reduction Task Force, co-chaired by the Minister of National Security and the Attorney General, with a n90-day action plan beginning on Dec. 7. The homicide count in St. Vincent and the Grenadines currently stands at 42, with two months of the year still to go. But remember that fighting crime is not just about counting the numbers of homicides it is about developing policies and programmes to change the behaviour of people, especially young Vincentians.
A key announcement for Vincentians was the first increase in National Insurance pensions in 12 years. A welcome gesture to many.
The leadership of the Unity Labour Party (ULP) has since called the prime minister’s address the worst since independence. We, on A View from the Outside, disagree. Whatever else is wrong in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, that was the most candid account of the state of the public finances that Vincentians have been given from a national platform in a very long time. A prime minister stood at Arnos Vale on Independence Day and told his own people that the overdraft was operating illegally, that the deficit is unsustainable, and that the debt is heading for 140%. Governments do not normally say such things out loud much less on the night of a big national celebration. Calling that the worst speech since 1979 tells Vincentians more about the person making the complaint than about the speech.
That is not to say every criticism of the speech is unwarranted. The speech said nothing at all about the promised reduction of VAT from 16% to 13%, and Vincentians had been told to expect an update in October, so that silence was noticed. The request that the full Global Ports Holding agreement be published and laid before Parliament, with the head tax arrangements set out, is exactly right. We asked for the very same thing when the memorandum of understanding was first signed, before anybody else raised it. On that point, the criticism is justified and the government should do it.
Another issue that stood out from the Independence parade was its organisation. It was clear that to us on a View from the Outside that the organisation was a bit off.
Do we have a logistics and protocol officer or department in the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines?
It rained on Tuesday evening, as it does in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in October. It is the height of the hurricane season. The prime minister turned up and did his duty. There was no tent over him. He stood there and delivered the national independence address of St. Vincent and the Grenadines while the rain came down on his papers, and the papers got wet, and there was no second copy.
No one ran to his rescue. Call it what you may, it was an embarrassing display of incompetence, in front of Vincentians and in front of the world. Let us be very clear about whose fault that is, because it is not the prime minister’s. Somebody is responsible for setting up a dais or tent, if you may, at the national independence parade, and somebody is responsible for knowing that the Oct. 27 falls in the hurricane season, when it is likely to be wet, and whoever that person is, they failed on Tuesday.
A head of government also does not carry his own spare copy of a speech he is going to deliver at a national event. Why was there no device? A telephone, a tablet, anything with the text on a screen that does not dissolve when water hits it. Every secondary school student in St. Vincent and the Grenadines could have solved that problem in four seconds.
Seven weeks earlier, on Sept. 7, the prime minister stood in front of delegations from 19 Caribbean countries and territories at a regional workshop on artificial intelligence and the future of public financial management, told the region to go digital by design and to stop merely digitising what it already does. Seven weeks later, the national independence address was read off wet paper because nobody thought to put it on a screen.
We on A View from the Outside are not making fun of the man or the situation. We are pointing out that the gap between what this government says about modernising the state and what the state actually did on its own biggest night is about the width of one iPad.
Then there was the parade itself, and this has to be said carefully, because we are grateful for those who turn out to participate in the parade. A military parade is not a pageant. A hallmark of a well-executed military parade is precision. On Tuesday, the precision was lacking and the drill was not sharp. The combined cadet and police force band consistently marched out of step with one another and the music was badly off. Marching out of step is rehearsal time. Music out of tune is instruments nobody has serviced. On Tuesday, Vincentians got both.
A great many of the uniforms plainly did not fit the people wearing them.
We on a View from the Outside are not blaming any single cadet for how they look on parade. A 15-year-old standing out on the Arnos Vale field in a tunic that is too big for him did not choose that tunic, did not order it and can do nothing whatsoever about it. He turned out in public for his country. The same goes for the police officers.
A band plays as one when it has been given the hours to rehearse as one, and those hours are somebody’s decision and somebody’s budget. If the cadet corps and the police force band were put on the same field without enough joint practice, that is not a failure of our young people; it is a failure of planning.
If the uniforms are old and ill-fitting, Vincentians are entitled to ask a blunt question in the very week the prime minister disclosed EC$178 million in unpaid government bills. Has somebody not been paid? Or have those uniforms been wearing out for years with nobody replacing them, which would make it one more example of the neglect and mismanagement of St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past 25 years?
Oct. 27 has been Oct. 27 for 47 years. This is the single most predictable event in the life of the Vincentian state. Nobody has to be told it is coming and nobody has to be told it may rain. If we cannot competently run the one thing we have done every year since 1979, Vincentians are entitled to ask what else is being left to the last minute. This is the same state that has EC$170 million of development money sitting unspent, audit reports arriving years late, and bills of EC$178 million it has not paid. A dais with a cover for the prime minister to deliver his speech in the rainy season is a small thing and that is exactly the point. The small things are the ones for which there should be no excuse.
So, in the coming days, when somebody tells you that the prime minister gave the worst independence speech since 1979, ask them which part of what he said was untrue. When somebody else tells you the fuss about Tuesday is only about umbrellas and wet speeches, agree that it is about umbrellas and wet speeches, and then ask them who in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is responsible for the conduct of our national parade.
Ask them where the order of precedence for a state occasion is written down. Ask them whose job it is to see that a cadet’s uniform fits before he is put out in front of the nation. Ask them why nobody put a cover over the man who was telling the country that its overdraft is operating illegally.
A state that cannot keep the national address dry on the one date it has known about for 47 years is telling Vincentians something, and it is not about the rain.
*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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