CARIBARENA Antigua & Barbuda

Fellow Citizens and Residents of Antigua and Barbuda. Everyone knows that our economy has stagnated and that the UPP government has no answers for the country’s economic malaise except to go to the International Monetary Fund (the IMF).

Throughout our country many of our proud people have been forced to beg for handouts in order to live.

Everywhere I go,  I am met by the same complaints from decent people who want nothing more than to get a job and to keep themselves and help keep their families.

They say what we all know – the UPP has imposed a high cost of living upon our country while at the same time either imposing more taxes or expanding the goods upon which they apply the Government sales tax.

Many hundreds of our people simply cannot make ends meet, and they are forced to eat less, forced to do without electricity, forced to cut back on the use of water.

A great number, including children, are reduced to begging.

Our business community is constrained from the contribution that they can make to the predicament into which the UPP has plunged us, because they too are confronted with high taxes, high costs of utilities, and less spending by the public.

Unemployment has now reached the 15% mark even though the UPP hides the truth, pretending that the economy is doing well and jobs are being created.

Just last week another hundred people were put out of work as the former Stanford companies in the Airport vicinity were forced to close by demands from APUA for non-payment of bills.

A Tasty Lunch At Napoleon Napoleon Café is a very relaxing and beautiful spot located in St John’s. As you might imagine, it does capitalize on the old French general, Napol... read more

Already, the Airport vicinity has lost the splendor and attractiveness to which it had become well known.  Cassi bush is seen everywhere and the once gleaming and well manicured area is beginning to take on a shoddy, rundown appearance.

Such is the neglect and lack of creativity of the UPP government that it allows this area to deteriorate rapidly.

But it is in causing more of our people to lose their jobs that the UPP has been most wrong.

If the UPP were a caring government  it would have intervened with APUA to work out arrangements for APUA to be paid over time while these enterprises were kept open maintaining the workers and management in jobs.

There is no question that if money is owed to APUA by these companies, APUA has a right to be paid.

But, in this already “hard guava season” brought on by UPP mismanagement, surely arrangements could have been made for a payment scheme by the companies that could have given APUA a regular cash-flow while keeping the enterprises open and the workers employed.

That is what an ALP government would have done.

We did it in the past successfully – particularly after hurricanes had severely damaged businesses.

Not so the UPP.

This heartless gang sits idly by, while hard working  people lose their jobs, putting their families into hellish conditions to survive.

And, the UPP says nothing.

Just as they nothing about that ugly blot on the St John’s landscape that they call a car park.

Accommodating nothing but rats and overgrown grass, the most expensive half-done car park in the world, hangs vacantly over St John’s as a constant reminder of the UPP’s capacity to squander money, creating no sustainable jobs and no benefit to the people.

Equally telling are the jelly-bean sidewalks - a daily deathtrap to residents and tourists alike in St John’s.

These useless sidewalks and the 10 miles of now dilapidated roads in and around St John’s cost almost $20 million – producing not one sustainable job and no recognizable gain to the country and its people.

Even more millions of dollars was wasted on fencing playing fields – we now have the most expensive playing fields in the world.  But they produced no lasting jobs.

I remind everyone that the UPP lied its way into office in 2004 when they said they would not impose personal income tax.  They lied.

In a few short months, income tax was laid upon the shoulders of many in our country reducing their take-home pay and making it difficult for them to manage.

The UPP also lied their way into office in 2004 by saying they would not burden the nation with a government sales tax.  In a few short months, the government sales tax was applied against a wide range of goods and services reducing still further the ability of people to make ends meet.

The UPP lied in 2004 when they claimed that they had investors lining-up to come into the country.

Except for the one election campaign financier to whom they gave away the Royal Antigua Hotel – the property of the people of this country – not one new investor or any substance came to Antigua.


Every project undertaken in the early years of the UPP mismanagement of our country was started under the ALP or had been agreed under the ALP.

Once those projects ran out, the nakedness of the UPP was revealed for all to see.

In the meantime, from 2004 to 2009, they increased the national debt of the country to $1.5 billion that we know about.  Much of these debts were never brought to Parliament for debate and approval.  Their terms are shrouded in secrecy.

At the same time, the UPP raised $1 billion in taxes, bringing the total revenues from borrowing and taxes over five years to $2.5 billion.

Yet, the country has nothing to show for it except high unemployment, increased pockets of dire poverty, high rates of violent crime and high cost and decaying projects that created no jobs.

The UPP clearly could not be trusted with the administration of the country’s affairs.  Mismanagement, incompetence and sleaze were evident everywhere.

Recognizing that they could not win a free and fair general election, the UPP stole the March 2009 election. The electoral fraud and manipulation were experienced by many and seen by many more.

But, even as they planned and executed electoral fraud, the UPP continued to lie to the people of this country.

Before the 2009 election, they said that they would not take our country to the IMF.  They said I was a liar when I told this nation that they had already begun to talk with the IMF. Now we know who the lairs are.

And, even before they sign an agreement with the IMF, they have already put some of the IMF’s preconditions in place. That is why they raised the price of LPG, gasoline and diesel. That is why they expanded the list of goods to which they have now applied the government sales tax.

That is why they dismissed people from the public service, and that is why they did nothing about the latest closure of companies that put over a hundred people out of work.

There is more to come.

The UPP intends to do the following:

- Dismiss more public servants

- Change the conditions for pensions by raising the pensionable age and reducing the   amount of pension paid to certain categories of people

- Freeze wages and salaries

- Raise company taxes

- Widen the net for personal income tax

- Increase  the government sales tax and expand the range of goods and services on which the ABGST will be imposed.

They also plan to sell off state-assets, and these no doubt will be sold-off to their friends even while they continue their empty slogan about “government in the sunshine” and “transparency”.

The UPP has proven to be a government in the darkness, furtive and untrustworthy.

And, at no time, in the crises in which they have submerged us did one of them turn up to offer an explanation, or to give an alternative, or to champion the rights of people.

In the Airport affair, no sign of the Minister of Tourism or the Prime Minister.

In the cancellation of calls by two cruise ships, no sign of the Minister of Tourism or the Prime Minister. In the murder of a tourist and assault on others, no sign of the Minister of Tourism or the Prime Minister.

In the forced closure of three companies last week and the loss of jobs of over a hundred people, no sign of the Labour Minister or the Prime Minister.

Except for mismanagement, victimization and discrimination the UPP is an absentee government.

Incidentally, for those who doubt anything I say about the IMF conditions, I invite you to look at the IMF Inernet website that laid out the terms for lending Jamaica money.  It was published last Thursday.

The present Jamaica government may feel that it has no alternative but to go to the IMF.  That is something repeated by at least one Jamaican among us who cannot see that Antigua and Barbuda is different.

Antigua Jackpot Hits M What would you do with million? This will soon become the most frequently asked question, as the Super Lotto jackpot jumped to a whopping M on... read more

But, our country is different.  For a start, its population is only 4% of the Jamaican population; its costs are therefore considerably less.  We also have a higher per capita income, built-up over years of the ALP government; we have a higher rate of literacy and a larger pool of computer literate people on a per capita basis.  The fundamentals of our economy are very different and, with the right creative and experienced management, can be rejuvenated bringing expanded business, more jobs, and increased revenues.

The people who live in Antigua and Barbuda now are the same people who pulled it up by its bootstraps throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s and the early part of the 2000’s.

We resisted the pressures and punishments of the IMF and built the country despite the odds.

It was the UPP from 2004 to now that superintended our nation’s ruination.

We, the citizens and residents of Antigua and Barbuda, have a right and an obligation to redeem it from further UPP destruction.

Next week, I will start to lay out our vision for restoring our country to prosperity.Until then, I pray God’s blessings for all of us, and I thank you for listening.