INTRODUCTION
Madame Speaker, colleague Parliamentarians, fellow citizens of the Nature Island of Dominica, on behalf of the leadership and members of the United Workers Party TEAM Dominica – the Parliamentary Opposition of Dominica – duty calls me to respond to the 2019/2020 Budget Statement of the Dominica Labour Party Government delivered by the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance less than 24 hours ago on July 30th, 2019.
The outrageous is now the norm. Deliberate, calculated limitation of the time to respond to a budget statement prepared over many months with input from an army of public officers under the watch of the largest Cabinet in the OECS. Sadly, we end the budget debate component of this parliamentary term with yet another example of the hostility to Parliament’s oversight responsibility for public finances that this administration is proud to wear as a badge of honor.
In response to its near 20-year record of consistently achieving the worst economic performance results in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, we stand on our commitment to develop and grow a model green economy that rewards enterprise, puts our people to work for decent wages, gives a fair chance to all and secures our place in the global trade of goods and services.
For too long, we have been going back to our future. Trying hard to move forward in better health, more wealth, progress and happiness but to finding ourselves trapped in the punishing cycle where the struggle to survive just gets harder and harder.
God has blessed us with his nature island of the world in which we have everything we need to take care of ourselves – our physical needs, our safety and security, our love and belonging, our emotional well-being, our hope and healing. But for two decades we have been running around in circles stuck with the sameness of the past and going nowhere fast.
Now we hear of a new Dominica… new Dominica in which the head of state makes excuses for the refusal of the ruling party to provide the people’s money to secure elections with integrity as the backbone of our democracy.
In this new Dominica we are supposed to embrace the crimes of bribery and treating, impersonation, fraud, the abuse of being in charge of the people’s money, the purchase of overseas votes, lack of opposition access to the media and lack of campaign finance reform as standard features in our election.
A new Dominica in which it is OK to lie, cheat and steal as pathways to the seat of government, a new Dominica in which the resources of Dominica are diverted to enrich foreign interests while Dominicans suffer.
Let there be no doubt. A new Dominica begins with change, not fake, cosmetic change in the footprint of dictators… Real Change.
We respond today to the rising demand for change of government with the assurance that your United Workers Party Team Dominica is ready to end the governance of hopelessness and the politics of division and under-performance which has gripped our isle of beauty under the DLP administration over the past two decades.
