THE POLITICAL DISEASE OF DENIAL
The apologists and fellow-travellers of the opposition NDP are in a state of denial; they should avoid each other because this contagious political disease among this small, and shrinking band of rank opportunists and Ralph-haters, is dangerous for their health. They are likely to go crazy when the NDP loses again later this year in the next general elections.
These deniers of truth concoct falsehoods, large and small; they deny the immense progress that SVG has made, and is making, under the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government; and they seek, in vain, to deny the disaster of the NDP for SVG. They elevate relatively trivial complaints on this or that, seeking to turn them into celebrated causes. And their hypocrisy, vaunted self-importance, opportunism are sickening as they traffic their tawdry wares in their echo chambers online and elsewhere; some even eat-ah-food from China for doing all this on radio, social media, and in newspapers. But the people know them for what they are, including the puny men and women who are Renegades, Traitors, and Castaways to the people’s cause as admirably advanced by the ULP. Let us provide, in a sufficiency of detail, two examples of the foolishness, denials, lies, untruths, and distortions of the apologists and fellow travellers in the discredited camp of the NDP.
THEY HOWL: “SVG HAS MINIMUM WAGES OF ONLY US$1.16 PER HOUR”
Last year, 2024, in the month of March, the ULP government increased the minimum wage for agricultural and casual workers from EC $40 to EC $50 per eight-hour day or an hourly rate correspondingly. EC $50 per eight-hour day is equal to US $18.52 or US $2.31 per hour or EC $6.25 per hour.
Yet, these NDP apologists, fellow-travellers, and deniers choose to circulate some information from some allegedly reliable source, proclaiming that the hourly basic minimum wage is US$1.16 or US$9.28 per eight-hour day. None of these persons (including lawyers and accountants, perhaps some who pay below minimum wages for their employees and who do not turn over to the NIS the deducted contributions from their employees), bothered to do the elementary arithmetical conversion from EC $50 per eight-hour day to its US $ equivalent. What a sorry bunch!
These very disreputable persons declined to state, too, that there are higher minimum wages for various other categories of workers who are not agricultural or casual workers. They also failed to publish the unvarnished fact that no agricultural or casual worker, works anything close to eight hours daily; invariably, they work for four hours per day, maximum. If you want them to work for longer than that, you pay them more. It is well-known, too, that such workers in SVG have set a reserve price for their labour significantly above the minimum wage.
Furrher these very lying propagandists conveniently forget that the NDP government increased the minimum wages only once in their 17 years in office; the ULP government has done so four times. And in 2001, when the NDP left office, the basic minimum wage for agricultural and casual workers was under EC $20 per eight-hour day or less than US $0.93 cents per hour.
So, as you see, these awful NDP people are not interested in the facts or the truth. Their purpose is to make the ULP look bad; and they would lie through their truth to achieve that purpose. Despicable lot, indeed!
THEY SCREAM: “SVG’S HDI SCORE CANNOT BE AT A HIHG LEVEL OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND ABOVE THAT OF CHINA.”
The NDP apologists, fellow-travellers, and Ralph-haters, assert with no reference to the factual evidence, that it cannot be that SVG has been assessed as having a “high level of human development”, and above the ranking of China in this respect. Well, all that they had to do is to go online and read the Human Development Report 2025 published recently by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with the caption: “A Matter of Choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI.” They accuse the messenger, Ralph, of senility; they will suffer for traducing the Comrade without rhyme or reason. God is not sleeping!
For decades now, the UNDP has been publishing its annual Human Development Report. The UNDP has fashioned, and has been refashioning, an Human Development Index (HDI) based on a number of social and economic indicators. It has four categories or levels of human development: Very High; High; Medium; and Low. It provides “values” or scores for each of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, and ranks them accordingly.
In its 2025 Report, the UNDP lists 74 countries as having a “Very High Leel of Human Development”. These are countries which score a composite “value” on the HDO of 0.8 or above (equivalent to an 80 percent score on the composite indicators). Topping the list in 2025 is Iceland, small country, with a “value” score of 0.972; the country listed at 74th is the Eastern European nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the “Very High Level” are five Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda (ranked at 53 with an HDI Value of 0.851); St. Kitts and Nevis; Bahamas; Barbados; and Trinidad and Tobago (ranked 72nd with an “HDI Value” of 0.807).
The next category is “High Level of Human Development” with a ranking of countries from 75th (the Islamic Republic of Iran with an “HDI Value” of 0.799), down to 124th (Nauru, a small country in the Pacific, with an “HDI Value” of 0.703 or a 70 percent score on the composite indicators). In this “High Level of Human Development” is SVG, ranked number 76th in the world with an “HDI Value” of 0.798 (79.8 percent, just slightly shy of the 80 percent mark to be in the “Very High Level of Human Development.”) Thailand is tied with SVG at 76th; and China follows at 78th with an “HDI Value” of 0.797 (79.7 percent). In the 2022 ranking by UNDP, SVG was ranked 75th and China 74th. Please note that the volcanic eruptions of 2021, Hurricane Elsa of 2021, and Hurricane Beryl of 2024 had beset SVG! Without those disasters, it is certain that SVG’s HDI value or score would have been higher.
Clearly, on other measurements, China is ahead of SVG: Applied science and technology; military power; aggregate economic size and strength. But the HDI measures “human development”, not other things.
In the “Medium Level of Human Development”, countries are ranked from 167th (an “HDI Value” of 0.550) to 125th (an “HDI Value” of 0.698); the behemoth, India, is in this Medium Level. The “Low Levels of Human Development” covers countries ranked 193rd (Sudan with an “HDI Value” of 0.554). Guyana is moving up fastest in the rankings of CARICOM countries; that is the effect of oil, and more.
It is to be noted that SVG is also ranked higher in our hemisphere than the following countries: Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Cuba (97th with an HDI value of 0.762), Paraguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua (all in the “High Development” category). SVG is also ranked ahead of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (“Medium Level” countries). Ranked above SVG in our hemisphere in addition to the hitherto named five CARICOM countries are other “Very High Level” countries, namely, Canada (16th with an “HDI Value” of 0.939), the USA (ranked 17th), Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica.
Of the 33-member countries of the Community of States of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC), SVG in 2025 is ranked higher than 22 countries and below 10. SVG has travelled remarkably well over the last quarter century or so in the UNDP’s assessment of “human development”. We on track to rise higher to the Very High Level and rank high within that very category.
EVEN MORE NDP FALSEHOODS
The untruths of the NDP and those of their apologists and fellow-travellers relate also to the following, among others, that: The construction of the “modern port” is failing; Ralph is busy stealing the elections; unemployment is rising; the economy is not growing; the public debt is unmanageable; political victimisation is rampant in the award of contracts and scholarships; the revenue side of the government is not performing; poverty is on the increase; the acute care hospital at Arnos Vale is sinking; crime is uncontrollable; housing repairs after Beryl are going badly; Beryl money is not being paid to the deserving; the DPP’s office is in shambles; Ralph is going senile; Julian died last Friday; and so forth. All of them malicious, damnable lies, easily refuted by the facts.
Not even Chinese take-away food and sumptuous desserts from the dreamers from India can save the NDP from another defeat! The lazy, weak, indecisive, and fake Lorraine Friday, the NDP’s leader, cannot make the cut; his other candidates are also empty, infantile, full of bile and political malice, opportunistic to the core, devoid of plans for the betterment of SVG; the NDP, a mere coalition of self-seeking electoral elites are a standing danger to SVG. The people will reject them again and again!
