DECEIT, LIES, EMPTINESS OF NDP AND ITS FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
BACKWARD AND ANTI-PEOPLE
The opposition NDP and its fellow-travellers have had on full display, in recent times, their deceit, abominable lies, hypocrisy, emptiness, backwardness, and anti-people tendencies. The NDP has no core philosophy save and except a slavish obeisance to money grabbers, passport sellers, corrupt peddlers of the sale of our citizenship, business people of disrepute from mainland China, imperialists, and would-be hegemons. In 24 years in opposition, the NDP, after James Mitchell, has been captured by the most backward, vacillating, power hungry, and anti-people section of the urban, petit bourgeois professional class, (including those who came from the poor) who crave status (social estimation of honour) and lucre. Despite hypocritical pretensions to the contrary, they look down upon the urban poor and the working class; they hold in contempt the peasantry and rural folk generally. They are a pathetic lot; so, too, are their fellow-travellers, some of whom once considered themselves “progressive”, but who are now lost souls, stuffed with insecurity, greed, and petit bourgeoise neuroses.
Some among the drivers of, and in, the NDP having failed at practically everything they have touched, have taken up politics as a possible rescue station on their way to the poor house. By and large, they display an ignorance of public affairs that is breathtaking. They are possessed by the demons of political revenge, bile, anger, bitterness due to their failure to achieve anything of consequence in their own sad lives; rather than look inside for the reasons for their personal failures and insecurities, they pin the blame on someone else, invariably Comrade Ralph, who has had nothing to do with their personal neuroses, under-achievement or non-achievement. They wrongly think that state power will solve their insecurities and satisfy their wants, but it will not; the bass man of insecurity and avarice will continue to beat in their fragile heads; they are doomed, irredeemable.
Indeed, more than one of them have publicly asserted the outrageous falsehood that “Ralph destroyed me and me family.” All that Ralph and the ULP have done is to win elections for five consecutive terms since 2001. The NDP leaders are now gripped by the dreaded fear that they are on track to lose the next general elections later this year. Publicly and privately, they have declared that they are “desperate”; desperate men and women are quite capably of doing desperate things. They are dangerous to the common weal and the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
THE DRIVEL OF BREAKING “RALPH’S SPELL”
Some prominent grumpy old men in the NDP and assorted fellow-travellers, in their failure to understand the rational basis of the public’s support for Comrade Ralph, the ULP, and their people-centred vision, philosophy, policies, and programmes, scour the dustbin of their minds for a thesis on which to hang a convenient theory of explanation. Disregarding the facts of the monumental achievements of the ULP and its path to sustainable development, disregarding the totality of the real condition of vastly improved lives, living, and production in SVG, these leaders in the NDP and their pathetic fellow-travellers have fooled themselves into believing that Ralph and the ULP have “cast a spell on the people and it must be broken.” Has anyone ever heard of such nonsense that passes for analysis by those puny minds? This drivel is insulting to every Vincentian.
Everyone of sober mind and modest intellect knows that “a spell” is a kind of bewitching, charm, or enchantment that constitutes a magic or “obeah” intended to trigger or engender an enduring magical or other worldly effect on a person or persons. Pray tell, what is the nature of the “spell” of Ralph and the ULP which induces or prompts a magical or supernatural submission of the people to them? Of course, there is no such “spell”, only love for, and devotion to, the people by Ralph and the ULP, as demonstrated in, among other things, the beneficial policies and programmes for the people over the last 24 years; these facts do not lie! We remember that in 2001, at a post-election public meeting, the NDP spokespersons asserted from the platform that the ULP won because Ralph “work obeah pon the people.” The current thesis of Ralph’s “spell” is an updated version of this folly.
LET US CUT TO THE CHASE
By the time of the next general elections, Lorraine Friday, Leader of the NDP, will be 66 years old. The four Prime Ministers of SVG thus far (Cato, Mitchell, Eustace, Ralph) were first elected to that office in their early 50s; Friday, lazy, weak, and unimaginative to the core, is already in retirement mode; as Leader of the Opposition, Friday has been abysmally poor; moreover, he treasures his voluntarily-acquired Canadian citizenship over his Vincentian birth-citizenship. Can anybody seriously see Friday as a Prime Minister especially in these challenging times? NO! He is an absolute fake who tries unsuccessfully to mimic Comrade Ralph. Why go for the fake when the genuine article is available?
St. Clair Leacock and Daniel Cummings are in their early 70s; they have never held a ministerial office. Given their “wildness” of speech and behaviour in, and out of Parliament, both of them are unconvincing ministerial material; each has a bundle of disqualifying weaknesses and limitations for ministerial office. And can anyone see Terrance Ollivierre, Nature Stephenson, Fitz Bramble, Israel Bruce, and Shevern John, for different reasons, truly capable of handling a Ministry, particularly with weak and lazy Friday as leader, and the grumpy old men, Leacock and Cummings in the wings as ministerial first-timers. The other declared candidates for the NDP are very underwhelming; they talk pure rubbish.
Moreover, the NDP is internally-divided and its centre cannot hold. There is so much internal bickering in the NDP; it has spilled over into the public space. Contrast this to the unity and political stability of the ULP.
So, let us cut to the chase: After a quarter century in opposition the NDP has yet to show that it is fit to govern. For most of the NDP’s leadership, the next elections are the metaphoric “last train to San Fernando”. Their political careers will end in disarray and failure! Thus, their desperation!
NDP: NASTY TO THE POOR
The NDP’s nastiness towards the poor is a permanent blot on their vile politics. Over the years, the NDP has decried, and opposed, the ULP government’s targeted assistance for the poor and disadvantaged. They have insisted that too many people receive public assistance; they say, too, that the money paid is far too much. They have complained, also, that the income support for farmers, farm workers, fishers, affected families, post-Beryl, is too excessive and extensive; they aver, stupidly and falsely, that the ULP government is buying votes with Beryl money. In the same vein one of their fellow-travellers recently delivered himself of a piece of anti-poor rhetoric dressed up in demagogic clothing by bemoaning what he called “the blatant wastage of national resources as government embarks on a giveaway of national resources with the sole intent of buying its way to another term in government and official corruption.”
So, helping people with their houses and providing production and income support after a category 4 hurricane is “blatant wastage of national resources” amounting to “vote buying” and “official corruption”? What level of idiocy is this? So, after the 2020 general elections and the volcanic eruptions in April 2021, when the ULP government did the same thing (building houses and providing income support) was it buying votes? Incidentally, are the CDB and World Bank involved in this “official corruption” since much of the resources come from loans negotiated with both of these financial institutions?
FUNDING OF THE NDP CAMPAIGN
The foreign entities which want to sell our Vincentian citizenship and passport are funding massively the NDP election campaign. Among these entities are firms from mainland China are also putting their money on the NDP to break with Taiwan and embrace mainland China; in the mix, too, are those financed by some dreamers from India who also are in the passport racket. In a nutshell that is the plan to sell out SVG.
The financiers are also funding anti-Ralph and anti-ULP newspapers (including those online), radio stations, and commentators, and any chancer, barman, or cook who turns to anti-Ralph political activism. They are all singing for their supper: Chinese take-away and Indian food, from overseas. These foreign financiers, who are entirely unworthy and rapacious, are antithetical to our country’s interests, and are the ones who are engaged in vote buying, “influence” peddling, and corruption, inclusive of the corruption of our democracy. They want to sell passports as fast as they can; the hangers-on locally are salivating to thief as fast as they can; speed for all of them is essential. Contemptuously, they see our noble people as “voting cattle”. They are so wrong.
And they will be defeated again by the ULP.
COCKEYED VIEW OF THE REALITY
In the telling of the NDP and its fellow-travellers, the reality of the huge socio-economic and good governance accomplishments of the ULP government are ignored, down-played, or dismissed, and an alternative reality of damnation and doomsday is invented. But the people know the truth. And the people trust Ralph and the ULP far more than they will ever trust the terrible lot in the NDP and their dishonest, hypocritical fellow-travellers.
We in the ULP look forward eagerly to the next general elections. We are the victory: ULP wins, the people win!
IN THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD OF THE NDP
In the heads of the NDP they construct their make-belief government of the future, a mirage of the deluded. Some seminal picks in their deluded minds include: Luzette King or Monty Roberts as Governor General; Israel Bruce or Zita Barnwell, or Dinky Balcombe’s wife as Attorney General; Friday (the man who can’t count) as Minister of Finance; Daniel Cummings (the man who thinks that he knows everything about everything since he last served at CWSA in 2004) as a novice Minister of Health and the Public Service; Leacock (mercurial, up-and-down, insulting everyone, a man who can’t hold to a good thing) as a novice Minister of National Security; former Sergeant Brenton Smith (now General Secretary of the NDP) is to return to the Police Force as Commissioner.
The farce gets worse with the persons to head the Boards of State entities: Bigger Biggs at BRAGSA after he is paid by the NDP government the promised $5 million in damages on the bogus claim at Rabacca; Dougie De Freitas at VINLEC; Keith Joseph at National Lotteries; Vynette Frederick at BOSVG; Mespo Gypsy at CWSA; Cupid (after he loses to Curtis) at NIS; Clueless Andrew John (after he loses in South Windward) at National Properties; and so on. Oh, and do not forget Adriana King as Headmistress of Girls’ High School and the other suspended King at Prisons to be installed as the Superintendent of Prisons. Meanwhile, the NDP will prepare for the selling of the new Hospital to the foreign private sector, and the selling of BRAGSA’s operations at Rabacca to their favoured local contractor. And a short man, a turn-coat winnable Napoleon will be pleading for a placement somewhere, way above his very modest talents; in 2015, he wanted to be Minister of Health. And what of the Chancer who eye-witnesses nothing wrong with the NDP?
What will happen to them when the NDP loses again? Will they scream “fraud” again as they did in 2005, 2010, and 2015? Their desperation is palpable.
But the NDP and their opportunistic fellow-travellers will not succeed!
