My fellow Citizens and Residents of Antigua and Barbuda
Next Thursday, October 8th we have the opportunity to register our dissatisfaction with the UPP regime that now mismanages our country bringing hardship on our people that we have not known for over a generation.
We have the chance to demonstrate our outrage at the lies that the UPP regime told our people to snatch the 2004 general elections.
We have the occasion to record our indignation over the stealing of the March 2009 general election by the UPP through blatant fraud.
When we march together on Thursday October 8th it must be a red-letter day.
We must come out in our numbers to show the UPP that we have had enough of the heavy burden of taxes that they have placed on our people.
We must come out in our numbers to tell the UPP we are angry that our young people are living without hope; without a job in sight; without the expectation of a good future.
My friends, you know as well as I do that a dark covering hangs over our country.
The typical refrain of businesspeople and others is that the economy is dead.
Young people are becoming more disillusioned every day as the prospects for finding any jobs – let alone a reasonable job – recedes into the far distance.
The UPP’s only answers to this dreadful situation are: more taxes on the people; more dismissals from the public service and an IMF programme.
The UPP offers no relief from the hardship, the suffering and the hopelessness.
Instead, they try to make a virtue out of punishment.
Just this week, the finance minister, Harold Lovell, revealed that the UPP government is increasing fees and charges for services to the people for which they already pay taxes.
He also exposed that the UPP would be expanding the number of goods and services on which the government sales tax is applied. Thus, the UPP will increase the cost of living even more.
As the Chairman of the Labour Party, Gaston Browne, pointed out, the UPP is also raising the embarkation tax at a time when they have pushed Tourism into the doldrums and we need to be attracting more not less tourists.
Gaston rightly stressed that “while the UPP is lobbying the UK Government not to increase their embarkation tax because of the negative impact on the cost of air travel and the demand for our tourism product, the UPP in a most contradictory manner is seeking to increase the embarkation tax for both foreigners and visitors alike”.
If ever there was an unthinking government, this UPP regime fits the bill.
A further indication of their failure to consider the consequences of their actions is that the finance minister has announced that he plans to double the non-citizen land holding tax.
Again, they are doing this when our country needs foreign investment to bolster the economy, create new employment and earn foreign exchange.
Every other country in the world – bar none – is making it easier for foreign direct investment, but the UPP is doing the opposite.
These new burdens on the citizens and residents of Antigua and Barbuda come quickly after the UPP raised the prices of gasoline, diesel and bottled gas (LPG), significantly increasing the cost of living for all, especially the poor.
And, this is a regime that pledged to the people of our country in March 2004 that it would not impose personal income tax and it would not impose a government sales tax on goods and services.
They lied then, and they have continued to lie ever since,
In March 2009, they lied again.
They pledged that the government sales tax would be removed from a number of goods to which it applied. Instead, as has now been revealed by the finance minister himself, they will expand the number of goods and services, and increase government fees and charges.
In other words, the UPP will burden the people of this country even more, at a time when unemployment is well over 20%, and real income has declined.
The further lie made in March this year, is that there would be no IMF programme.
Well, the IMF is coming, and with it will come public service dismissals, an end to public service pensions, wage freezes and a focus on repaying debt, most of which the UPP has incurred in the last five and a half years.
This so-called “government in the sunshine”, which has been nothing but a government in the shadows, has not yet told this nation what the terms are for the US$50 million they got from Venezuela recently, and just how much they have indebted us to Venezuela over the last few years.
As the people of this nation are aware, all governments are required to get the approval of parliament for monies they borrow. Yet, this government in the shadows has not brought one of these heavy borrowings to the Parliament of this country.
According to the UPP, the principal reason that they are seeking the IMF programme, when they said they would not do so, is because unless they are in an IMF programme they cannot borrow money.
How then did they borrow US$50 million from Venezuela?
Even more puzzling is: how come they have secretly and furtively issued a document to borrow another US$50.6 million for the airport? How is it that, without an IMF programme, the government has offered to guarantee a bond for the Airport Authority run by members and financial supporters of the UPP?
How is it that, without an IMF programme, the UPP has already clandestinely appointed an arranger for this US$50.6 million, without putting the requirement for an arranger out to tender?
And what is the link between members of the Airport Authority and the arranger who, according to the bond document, will be paid a considerable fee?
Does the IMF know that this bond issue has already been handed to HSBC Bank USA National Association, as Trustee?
My friends, the UPP lies to this nation at every turn. They have clearly come to the conclusion that they can tell the people of this country anything, do them anything, abuse them anyhow, and they will do nothing but accept it.
It is time, this nation tells them: enough is enough. It is time to make a stand.
Make a stand too for our jobless young people who the UPP have stripped of self-respect and deprived of a future.
Just imagine that the UPP is callously charging many of these young people to participate in the Youth Skills programme. Under the Labour Party, we gave young people a stipend so that they could survive while they learned.
But more than that, we ensured that they had jobs. We attracted the investment to create those jobs. When we left office in March 2004, unemployment was 5% and we were the envy of the Caribbean. Today, unemployment is well over 20%.
Young people must stand up for their rights. And, we must all stand up with them.
Wilmouth Daniel, in his letter of resignation as deputy prime minister, exposed that he had been offered a bribe by a fellow minister to agree to the purchase of a building for US$12 million for the Medical Benefits Scheme.
The building was bought, even though it was not needed, and the UPP is now rationing medication prescribed for you by your doctors. Your needs – the medication to keep you alive – is of no importance to them.
The charge of bribery by Wilmouth Daniel has never been investigated by the UPP government in the shadows.
While young people have no jobs; single mothers are finding it impossible to raise and feed their children; and people are begging on the streets for the first time in our modern history, the UPP and their friends are making money on projects that create no meaningful jobs and contribute little to sustainable production.
This is why on Thursday October 8th the UPP must see the cohesive presence of the people of this country in their numbers.
If you care about your children’s future, you should be there.
If you care about getting your medication, you should be there.
If you care about stopping the rot in our nation’s economy, you should be there.
If you feel it is time that the UPP understands “enough is enough”, you should be there.
We have to redeem our country from the disaster of the UPP and put it back on to the path of progress and prosperity.
We must march, demonstrate and do all else within our legal and constitutional rights, to end the abuse and mismanagement of the UPP.
No IMF.
No more price increases.
No more UPP.
Again, I pray the guidance and mercy of our Almighty God in relieving our nation of this huge UPP calamity.
Thank you for listening.
