Hon Asot Michael's speech made in parliament

Tuesday, 11 January 2011

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Madame Speaker, Members of this Honourable House, Citizens and Residents of Antigua and Barbuda…

I am again honoured to have the opportunity to represent the people of St Peters who elected me to this honorable house and to stand in defense of all Antiguans and Barbudans at this most difficult time.

Madam Speaker,  I want to at the very beginning of my budget contribution to re-confirm my undying love for this country, my love for my fellow Antiguans and Barbudans and my commitment to work, to make Antigua and Barbuda a country which we all can be proud of and where we can all live in peace and prosperity. Madame Speaker, as Parliamentarians we have a special responsibility to ensure our country prospers and our people can have a comfortable life ,where all our people can be the best they can be and have an opportunity to strive and work hard at attaining their life’s dreams.

Madame Speaker the dreams of our people are fast fading. Opportunities for our people to live a life of hope, a life of happiness, a life of accomplishments, a life of prosperity, are fast disappearing. Madame Speaker, this budget must be the people’s last stand, it must be the point where we make the necessary decisions by which the future of our people and the future of this country are restored.

The UPP government must understand the people did not elect them to destroy this country; the people did not elect them to make them jobless, our people did not elect them to make them poorer, to bankrupt their businesses or to sit in tears as the banks sell their homes and repossess their cars and trucks.

Madame Speaker, our people did not elect this UPP government to make health care depend on their individual capacity to pay. Our people did not elect this government to have them living in darkness and without running water because of exorbitant utility bills they cannot pay.

Madam Speaker, the UPP  government got a mandate to make this country better, and it should be painfully obvious to us all, that the UPP government must seek a new mandate if the overwhelming evidence shows beyond a shadow of doubt that this country has not improved, but rather life has become brutish, broke, bankrupt, jobless and,  hungry. Madame Speaker, economic conditions have deteriorated to the point where our people cannot take any more and to our shock, dismay and disappointment the government has no credible and practical plans to bring back prosperity to the land.

Madame Speaker, the UPP must either call fresh elections, or reach out to the Opposition to form a government of reconciliation, of national unity sharing power so that the best minds and most experienced professionals can be put to work restoring the economic and social development of Antigua and Barbuda.

Madame Speaker, I am here to make the case that economic and social conditions have reached rock bottom and disaster is fast spreading over Antigua and Barbuda, our people are suffering, it is time for a new mandate, it is time for a new team. I expect the Hon Prime Minister to stand up and make the tough decisions, to forge the political solution needed to save this country, or else I pray god’s forgiveness on all of us as a country we love so dearly becomes our prison, our hell, our Haiti..

These are dark days in our nation’s history… dark days of hopelessness and despair visited upon us by the men and women of the United Progressive Party whose presence in government is not the natural consequence of the rule of law but rather the corrupt result of a manipulation of the rule of law.

In 2009, the people wanted change, but the UPP controlled electoral machinery would not allow it. A ruling of the court at first instance gave the people a glimmer of hope that they would have the change they deserved after all… But the UPP expertise in turning substantive breaches of election law into the floor rag of legal technicality would not allow it.

So the change that the people yearned for did not materialize. And the UPP celebrated… They celebrated with more of the same incompetence that taxed our hard working people into poverty; corruptly siphoned millions of dollars of public money into private hands of their friends and cronies by buying up all these buildings; shrank the economy; and left the country totally exposed to the misfortunes of the global financial crisis. They celebrated with a mad rush into the embrace of economic enslavement code named International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance.

Madame Speaker, the will of the people could not stop them. The rule of law could not stop them. Simply because they have ordained themselves to do as they please in order to maintain the power and authority of government at all cost for their own private gain.

These are dark days indeed Madame Speaker… dark days of government consumed by acts of trickery and deception relentlessly engaged to frustrate and eventually bury the public desire for fair, transparent governance and the rule of law.

The dark days of men in high office, who know only too well, that they do not have a popular mandate to inflict the painful socio economic adjustments dictated by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a 318 million dollar loan. Yet, they thumb their noses at the noble idea of a government of national unity that would allow the nation to benefit from the best talents and skills on either side of the political divide.

There has never been better time for it. The people want it. The demise of the local economy confirms it is our only sensible choice. The global economic environment suggests there is no better national leadership and management option available to us at this time.

In the words of the famous Nike commercial, Madame Speaker, we should just do it.

The ALP is ready and we hope that sometime before the end of this budget debate, the UPP will decide to put the partisan rancor and one-upmanship games aside and come together in a government of National Unity.

It is the right thing to do for the peace, progress, prosperity and security of our beloved country.

We accept that this is a time for concerted, intelligent national action to navigate the tricky waters of the global economy. Indeed Madame Speaker, this is precisely why we are prepared to put aside partisanship and place at the disposal of government, our knowledge and expertise in successfully positioning the products and services of Antigua and Barbuda in the global market.

Accordingly, Madame Speaker, I urge the UPP once again, to put our country first… think of the absolutely necessity at this time for our democracy by the people, of the people, for the people to have the benefit of all capable hands on deck and thereby accept the compelling logic of a government of National Unity.

Madame Speaker since the last elections in March 2009, the economic record has been dismal, miserable, pauperizing, and painful. Madame Speaker, We have had negative growth of -11.5% in the last two years; our debt when the full contingent liabilities are acknowledged is over 4billion dollars; our budget deficit over the last two years is over three quarter billion or over $750 million.

 Investment is a long forgotten activity; foreign direct investment is now foreign to us. Unemployment is approaching 20 % with more job losses and wage reductions on the way .Our current budget shows nearly a forty percent cut when the real deficit is taken into account the deepest budgetary cut in the world according to UNICEF publication.

And Madame Speaker, we have been officially declared bankrupt by our formal programme with the IMF, a programme reserved for bankrupt countries that cannot get any loans from any other banking facility forcing us to go to the lenders of last resort, the official loan sharks, who feed on the livelihoods of our people.

Madame Speaker, tourism continues to show negative growth still below the 1995 land based tourism figures, businesses are failing, closing down, St Johns is becoming china town and the government has embarked on a plan to destroy our indigenous banks and insurance companies, hood winked into a foolish forced consolidation plan.

Our government has become auctioneers with plans to sell everything in sight; Royal Antiguan Resort and State Insurance.

Hunger stalks the land and we have not heard a single concrete activity; not a single concrete programme that will restore hope and relieve the suffering, the starvation, the pain. Madame Speaker, over a thousand Antiguan family homes are up for sale by our banks and 2500 cars are also put up for sale. Twenty percent of homes have been cut off by APUA for light and water because they cannot pay their bills and more locally owned businesses have closed in the last two years than in the last twenty years. Businesses all over Antigua have experienced from a 30% to a fifty five percent drop in revenue; our contractors are hiding from the banks and the lines in the banks are empty. .

Madame Speaker all around is sinking sand.

Madame Speaker the government does not know what it is doing. The Minister of finance and the economy, the man and ministry we expect to lead our recovery is playing dolly house.

Madame Speaker the very first page of the budget is wrong, grossly misleading, embarrassingly, nonsensical and indicative of the gross incompetence that is in charge of our economic fortunes.

Madame Speaker, please turn to the page, the very first page where the deficit is calculated. Madame Speaker, you will note that the Hon. Minister of finance did not include the debt payment in the calculation of the deficit. That the 95.1m for debt servicing is not included in the overall deficit. So the true overall deficit is not the 52.8m they have it as but the true overall deficit is really about $147.9m when the debt payment is taken into account.

Madame Speaker the Minister of finance needs to apologise to this Parliament for misleading us and misleading the people of Antigua and Barbuda.

Madame Speaker it means that in three years this UPP government has run up budgetary deficits of over a billion dollars. Madame Speaker the government should resign for this economic madness which is at the heart of the collapse of our local economy and the hardships our people are facing.

Madame Speaker, this budget statement is all about its credibility. Is it truthful? Are its policy prescriptions based on honest representations of fact? Can the people believe what it says? Can the UPP achieve the revenue and expenditure targets outlined in the 2011 budget statement?

Madame Speaker, once again this year, the numbers are manufactured to deceive:

“Current revenue is generated from tax and non-tax sources and in 2009 it was not sufficient to cover current expenditure.  Consequently, a current deficit amounting to $307.9 million or 10 percent of GDP was recorded in 2009. A significant contributor to this figure was an estimated $234 million in interest payments on the debt, which includes considerable penalties on arrears and past due interest”. 

This, Madame Speaker, is what we heard from the Finance Minister at page 19 of his 2011 budget statement. Government recorded a current account deficit of 307.9 million broad dollar notes in election year 2009. But in his 2010 budget statement when he was desperately trying to hide the stark truth of the UPP’s dismal revenue and expenditure performance, things were not that bad at all.

We were told then Madame Speaker that the current account deficit listed at 24.6 million in 2007 and 23.1 million in 2008… a deficit that should have wilted and died in the burning heat of superior UPP fiscal management ability, actually ballooned to 172.5 million dollars in 2009.

In December 2009, they knew well that the deficit was in the region of 300 million dollars. But that truth then would have completely spoiled their story of fiscal management capability. So they lied Madame Speaker. They lied and said the deficit was only 172.5 million knowing fully well they would have to come back the following year to make an adjustment of 135.4 million dollars to correctly record the 2009 deficit at 307.9 million dollars.

Trickery at its best Madame Speaker… deception at its best as truth is crushed to the earth, only to rise again when the UPP thinks it no longer matters.

What they will tell you on this score Madame Speaker is that the 172.5 million dollar deficit figure for 2009 in the 2010 budget statement was a projection at a time when the actual was not known. But eleven months of the fiscal period had gone by Madame Speaker. They must have known better. The projection was made in month 12 and the whopping 44% variance below the actual was either deliberate or extremely reckless.

In the abundance of hundreds of millions of dollars more in tax revenue in the last seven years, the UPP has failed to achieve one single current account surplus. The budget statement tells those who want to believe that in these times of IMF austerity there will be a surplus in 2010.

“In Budget 2010, a current account surplus of $77.3 million was projected under the Fiscal Consolidation Programme (FCP).  Despite the lower than anticipated revenue performance, an actual current account surplus of $58.3 million or 2 percent of GDP is projected for 2010”.

More projections Madame Speaker, at page 19 of the Budget Statement, promising this time that where there was a deficit of 307.9 million in 2009 we will have a surplus of 58.3 million in 2010, just like that.

The Finance Minister tells us at page 20 of the 2011 budget statement:

“This expected current  account surplus  is due to significant reduction in expenditure  for 2010.  Actual current expenditure for 2010 is projected to be $631.7 million.  This is about $280 million or 30 percent  less than actual current expenditure of $914 million recorded in 2009 and about $130 million less than the $759 million estimated in Budget 2010.   Also, a substantial reduction in the interest bill has been achieved as a result of the Government’s successful efforts to renegotiate and normalise the public debt”.

Madame Speaker, these smoke and mirror disclosures about reduced expenditure suggest that in 2010 Government found ways to avoid spending 280 million dollars on things it felt were important in 2009. What are these things? What is it that we spent 280 million dollars on in 2009 that we did no longer needed in 2010?

Madame Speaker in this wild spending spree there are no investments in schools, in health care, in job creation, in agriculture production, in tourism. Note, I said investments; by that I mean projects yielding benefits over an extended economic life cycle. Madame Speaker I will give you one example. If you turn to the government statutory bodies report summary and turn to Mount St John hospital you will see that the hospital received only half of what government promised. The 2010 budget had in $36m as government contribution to the hospital the government only gave $18m, a fifty percent cut.

Madame Speaker, in the 2010 budget there were no allocations to buy Bill Coopers building and repairing it at woods mall for a total cost of over $11m when repair cost, and furnishing Cost are included. Madame Speaker, the Minister of Finance used Mount St John’s hospital money to buy Coopers building. Patients suffered for lack of attention, diagnostic test could not be done because of no money from the ministry of Finance; people die because some one wanted a kick back on buying a building...

 So today mothers must pay over $7000 for three days stay to deliver a baby at Mount St Johns. Antiguan children cannot get birth paper unless they pay large medical fees at Mount St John. If you are rich you can get health care at Mount St John, if you are poor you can die because you have no money to pay at Mount St John. The health care is now worse than at Holberton Hospital. The number of days the equipment are not working has exceeded over fifty percent, Medical Benefits have been left bankrupt advancing money to Mount St Johns because the government is having a party with the peoples money buying buildings of friends, hiring friends at exorbitant salaries, A people left to die as outstanding contract or fees are paid, 67m for the fences, over a 100m for sidewalks.

 Madame Speaker one more example of the dolly house budget which was presented here, the Minister should have put up his Armani suit and put on the frills and pinks of a dolly house tea party. Madame Speaker, you remember this big announcement of a government farm, six million and training for young people, Madame Speaker I searched and searched and I could not find a single dollar for that programme in the budget. It is not mentioned any where it was just something made up in the dolly house tea party. Perhaps the Minister was hallucinating or simply just high on good bush tea.

Madame Speaker what about the 20m us dollar chicken farm that they have given out land for; Madame Speaker, the proposed investor cannot pay his two bedroom house rent, cannot pay to brush cut an acre of land and used to be an extension officer at extension. Madame Speaker when cocks have teeth we will see this investment or maybe after donkies turn green.

Madame Speaker there are no new investments, no new projects, no new money, no new jobs just dolly house stories.

 Madame speaker there is Diamond Estate, Cades Bay, Christian Valley, Orange Valley, Green Castle, Dunbar’s, CARDI farm, and Roberta Williams Methodist church training farm all struggling, no money, no programme. Yet this new plan to build another agricultural farm spending six million dollars, what for? Madame speaker they love to spend, it makes little sense but I am told somebody will make plenty dollars. After buying six tractors the minister of agriculture was driving a brand new jeep from the supplier, coincidence or just dolly house games.

Madame Speaker, this government does not understand how this economy works and they continue to make massive mistakes. Madame Speaker the Antigua Labour party built the economy focusing on investments both local and foreign, creating work for our people with high disposable incomes and low direct taxation, the Antigua Labour party built a secure social structure by making education up to tertiary level free with free text books, we made health care free, socializing their financing.

We kept the cost of fuel, water, and electricity and cooking gas stable and affordable. In other words, Madame Speaker, by socializing health care and education, providing a government pension, social security, medical benefits home care for the elderly, stipends for school drop outs to go to ABICE, we made sure the people’s taxes were spent on them not on side walks, ten million dollar a mile road, buying useless buildings and hiring friends paying quarter million dollar salaries with no required performance.

Madame Speaker, we facilitated the growth and development of the private sector, we encouraged the local banks and local insurance companies, contractors, merchants, importers, home owners, apartment builders, food sellers, vendors and transportation workers and taxi men;  we also built a wide and productive array of government corporate bodies like State insurance, APUA,  Halcyon cove Hotel, Royal Antiguan Hotel,  Heritage Quay, cruise ship piers, we got creative started the off shore sector, merchant ship registry, gaming, free trade zone, ABBIT, Mount St John and a fifty million dollar school expansion programme funded by the Caribbean development Bank.. Madame Speaker, the records will show that our local banks financed most of the local investments allowing our people to build their homes, apartment buildings, and supermarkets.

Madame speaker, what has this UPP government done; they sold Royal Antigua, State insurance is up for sale,  the airport and port, government pensions to be no more, retirement age to be 65, fees for school, state college,  hospital, and dollar barrel.

This government is also dead set on dismantling the private sector and ensuring that local businesses are also sold off. Our Banks are first in line. They have been the major financers of government and inspite of this fact and the government borrowing over a billion dollars from our indigenous banks this government has joined the governor of the central bank to force our locally owned banks to sell to a large regional group with bank of Antigua their first test case.

Madame Speaker the local insurance companies will be also forced out of business and the Chinese are taking over Market Street.

 Madame Speaker this government has refused to defend ACB, ABIB, CUB, Hadeed finance company they have taken their businesses to the foreign banks and are unable to service the loans, they have borrowed from the local banks. From a high of handling over 900m of government transactions and most of the stautory companies business the indigenous banks now handle less than 100m of government business. And now the government is joining with the governor of the central bank to force their sale touting consolidation as the good reason so to do.

The local insurance companies are also under the UPP government hammer; they too will be forced to sell out by new legislations already tabled in this house. This government is not aware without our local banks, with our local managers we will kill local investments and cut off a vital source of government financing.

Madame Speaker it is true the Labour party established diplomatic relationships with China long before it was popular, It is true that this country has benefited tremendously starting with the bridge, multipurpose center, the gutter at Green  Bay, soft loans, the Viv Richards stadium building, Mount St. John,  agricultural support, all negotiated by the Labour party government.

 It is true this government has continued the good relationship with the power plant, the street lights, scholarships, the repaired water tank and now the airport. Madame Speaker this is as result of the vision of VC Bird.  China had no money to give then VC Bird had the vision. Today many dollars of benefits are flowing.

 But in this parliament the Minister finance said boldly vision without money is hallucination. When VC Bird had the vision china was important and would be of benefit in the long run, he according to the minister was hallucinating; when VC Bird had the vision of a new Antigua  he had no money, when he had vision to buy back the lands from the plantocrats he had no money; when a poor child dreams of becoming a doctor, a penny bank dreaming of becoming a big billion dollar bank that according to our Minister of finance was hallucination.

That Madame speaker is what is wrong with this government it has no vision, it has no brains it has no sense just a simple greed for dollars.

Now Madame Speaker I am happy to thank the Chinese government for their kind assistance and to congratulate the government on maintaining good relations. Madame Speaker, I just wished we had done a better job at negotiating these projects; for example Madame speaker the street lights should have been solar and not now costing us nearly 5mega watts of expensive fossil fuel power. The power plant cost us 15m us dollars more than a similar capacity plant from Europe and USA and now we forgot to build a substation for that plant which cannot give no more than twenty of its 30megawatts capacity because of design limitations. And at the Viv Richards Stadium we got ten million dollar mile roads.

Madame Speaker, I am advised that this official government to government programme with the Chinese is not linked to the large number of Chinese and Chinese businesses and poor quality products taking over our country

But, Madame Speaker, in the face of this concern, what about the place of the citizens Antigua and Barbuda, in the economic activity of their own country? It boggles the mind that while we preoccupy ourselves with conquering the world outside, our local business community is been taken over by Chinese immigrants who unlike their Portuguese, Lebanese and Syrian counterparts show no interest whatsoever in providing employment opportunities for Antiguans and Barbudans.

These Chinese immigrants have branched out of the restaurant sector and are now involved in every area of the retail trade in St John’s. They represent the fastest growing group in the local business community and at current pace will soon crowd out a number of locally owned establishments.

The problem with this is not that the Chinese immigrants have chosen to set up in Antigua and Barbuda… the big problem is with their unwillingness to integrate and their refusal to share the employment and profit making benefits of their operations beyond members of their immigrant group.

In other words, they are succeeding in Antigua and Barbuda at the expense of Antiguans and Barbudans who are heading rapidly towards marginalization in their own country.

A number of these Chinese immigrants have the support of grant and concessionary loan financing for their business operations in distant lands from Government agencies in China which makes it impossible for local business concerns dependent on commercial bank financing to compete with them.

Added to what they get from the Chinese government, our government is apparently allowing them free reign to do whatever they feel they need to do to keep prices low and thereby out compete the local players.

There are growing concerns that these Chinese retail operations are underpaying taxes and racking up huge profits to be sent to China.

So while we are urgently seeking new economic opportunities for our people from the global economy, the biggest country in the global economy is exporting its nationals to our shores as part of a mission to dominate and control the economic landscape.

And Madame Speaker, the government is fast asleep.

Who is facilitating the massive influx of Chinese immigrants especially at this time when our Caribbean brothers and sisters living and working here are catching hell with local immigration authorities?

Most importantly Madame Speaker, who is looking out for the long suffering nationals of Antigua and Barbuda?

A government of national unity including members of the Antigua Labour Party most definitely will.

Madame Speaker, offensive of the Chinese immigrant calculated to make nationals second class in their country, is not the only atrocity currently attacking our humanity.

We have Madame Speaker the continuing political victimization of the People of the St Peter’s constituency simply because of their choice of a parliamentary representative.

The UPP does not like Asot Michael… The Prime Minister says he should be hounded into submission and so, the people he represents must pay the price.

St Peter’s, Madame Speaker, has now become the most run down, ramshackle and decrepit constituency in Antigua and Barbuda. With no public assistance, the public infrastructure is in total disrepair and vital community services like health care, education and sports continue to be neglected. Not one red cent of the tax dollars paid by the constituents of St Peter is put back in the area for their benefit.

The football field in Pares is not yet in use. The Parham basketball court has now graduated into the category of forest where farmers tie their hungry goats. The MP spends $1,700 to cut the field every month because the Ministry of Sports refuses to cut it… The Ministry of Sports is also refusing to replace the lights on the basket ball and football fields. The 800 thousand dollar fence around the Parham football has fallen down and those responsible for fixing it are totally unconcerned. CBH will not even clean and disinfect the gutters throughout the constituency.  There are roads in Gunthropes and Paynters that are totally unpassable by vehicles. There is no basic equipment in the health clinics and the Day Care Centre gets no assistance from Government.

In 2004 Madame Speaker, the constituents of St Peters were the first to be sent home from public works and CBH… They survive by the grace of God.

Madame Speaker, such crass victimization of a community of people all because of the political preference of the majority of its voters, is uncivilized and has no place in our democracy… We have a Christian duty to stop it immediately.

Madame speaker workers at the port are going home, at state insurance, at APUA; government workers are to lose their pension; fees are to be introduced for schools and at state college; jobs are none existent, investments are non existent Antigua and Barbuda we are in trouble, Madame Speaker the government is without ideas; the government needs a new mandate let the people decide. 

If the Prime Minister is asking for a coming together then he must be prepared to share power and form a government of national reconciliation. We have a country to save, the people will have to stand up and make their voices heard. I stand ready to play my part and help restore prosperity to our land.

As I close Madame Speaker, I again sound the call for unity in the national interest… It is time to walk away from the dark days of politics first and the country last… of one party building and the other tearing down… of witch hunts and personal vendettas… of the privileged few doing well while the masses are condemned to live in the hell of governance totally disconnected from their worthwhile dreams and aspirations.

And so Madame Speaker, even amid the encircling economic gloom I urge my fellow Antiguans and Barbudans to be of good courage in this struggle to overcome the failures of UPP governance.

The road is rough and rugged but I am confident that the good Lord will see us through to that triumphant day when we will proudly say “WE HAVE OVERCOME!”

Today, as I rest my case, I am comforted by the words of Julia Ward Howe:

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword

His Truth is marching on!”

Madame Speaker, Members of this Honourable House, Citizens and Residents of Antigua and Barbuda in general and my beloved constituents of St Peter in particular… please accept my very best wishes for a bright and prosperous New Year.