New Year's Message
Prime Minister
of
Antigua and Barbuda
The Hon. Baldwin Spencer
Fellow Antiguans and Barbudans here at home and in other lands;
Residents, Visitors and Friends of Antigua and Barbuda:
Happy New Year!
May you be resolute in keeping your New Year resolutions.
May your hopes for the New Year be fulfilled.
May life be better for you and your loved ones and may you enjoy good health and good fortune in the New Year.
2005 opens with the promise of a number of substantial direct private investments that can swiftly transform the economy and set all sectors on a pronounced upward curve.
The Government is putting mechanisms and measures in place to ensure equitable distribution of the opportunities that a number of anticipated major development projects will generate.
This can mean significant levels of new job opportunities for small contractors and other persons operating small businesses.
Antigua and Barbuda has good reasons to look forward to the New Year with optimism.
The Antiguan and Barbudan people have much to contemplate as the old year gives way to the new.
As we look forward in anticipation of positive things to come in the New Year, it is also time for reflection on the events of the year just passed.
We have come to the end of a momentous and historic year.
For those whose long stranglehold on power was finally broken by the people, 2004 was a tumultuous, turbulent and traumatic year.
For all in Antigua and Barbuda, for all who care about this country, 2004 was the predicted Year of Change.
It was a prophecy that was to dramatically come to pass on the 23rd of March, 2004.
It was the destiny of the United Progressive Party to be the chosen instrument for change in Antigua and Barbuda’s first general election in the new century and in the new millennium.
To an intently watching world, this was Antigua and Barbuda’s finest hour.
The Government came to office recognising that the monumental task of renewal and reconstruction confronting the nation would require the participation of the wider society, beyond the boundaries of the political system.
The extent of that participation has been gratifying.
This is despite the systematic efforts of a recalcitrant minority bent on subverting the programmes of the government, and bent on tarnishing and diminishing the aspirations and the achievements of the Antiguan and Barbudan people.
Indeed, Antiguans and Barbudans of all callings and all groupings have responded admirably to the challenge of change.
I thank the Antiguan and Barbudan people for giving the best they’ve got in the task of reconstruction and renewal of our nation.
His Excellency, the Governor General, Sir James Beethoven Carlisle, has been a generous exemplar in his ready cooperation and in his valued counsel.
I am grateful that Sir James stayed on to provide a pillar of stability in the transition from the previous administration to “Government in the Sunshine”.
Sir James has served his country well.
At this most critical juncture in our nation’s life our Governor General has stood well over ten feet tall.
I salute Sir James.
When criminal elements appeared to be stepping up a reign of terror against the society, I called upon the police for a swift and effective response.
Our Police force is delivering.
The nation is grateful.
We are grateful, too, for the protection our police men and women provided to the national community during the Christmas Season.
I am appreciative of the many successes of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the war against the trafficking and the cultivation of narcotics.
The ONDCP’s $25 Million Drug Bust was a spectacular victory in our war against the drug cartels and their local connections.
Alec Vanderpoole, the Director of the ONDCP, has been doing an impressive job.
The ONDCP, the Defence Force and the Police Force have been effective allies in the fight against the drug trade and the crimes of violence that trade spawns.
The public service, by and large, has measured up to the challenge of change.
This was markedly so in the preparation of the first Budget in this country to be presented ahead of its period of implementation.
Though less sharply defined, sterling efforts from officers throughout the public service enabled the country to navigate the challenging course of change that came with the transition between administrations and political and government cultures.
The introduction of free school uniforms was a major challenge.
Officers of the Ministry of Education managed the introduction of free uniform for the nation’s primary and secondary school students with commendable efficiency.
They ensured that early in the new school year, Free School Uniforms were available for every student in the school system.
I commend them all.
I especially commend Mrs. Anne Jonas, on her leadership of the Free School Uniform project.
Our customs officers and other officers of the Ministry of Finance met the challenges of the Dollar Barrel programme with singular success.
I am grateful to them, and I compliment all who were involved.
The nurses and other medical staff at Holberton continued to work with severely limited resources in the most challenging circumstances.
I applaud their dedication to the care of their patients.
I also applaud the initiative of the members of the Contractors Association and others in undertaking to refurbish and refurnish Holberton Hospital out of their own resources.
Care providers in other institutions are also rendering sterling service to the persons in their care.
I commend those care providers, too.
It is very likely that with private sector participation, which has already been pledged, the pressures at Holberton will be reduced with the commissioning of the Mount. St. John’s Medical Centre, toward the end of the New Year.
I wish the government could have afforded more than the payments we were able to arrange for those members of the public service whose negotiated increments and back pay had been unilaterally withheld for years by the previous administration.
I extend special appreciation to our pensioners for their understanding and patience in the face of the Government’s inability to immediately meet in full our Manifesto commitment to provide all senior citizens with a $1,000 monthly pension.
That commitment stands and will ultimately be delivered.
Following the special payment in December, Pensioners will receive an increase from this month.
Our Senior Citizens are blessed with the wisdom to know that their Government is doing all within its means to meet the many competing claims which confront us.
Without the cooperation and support of our banking community, Government would not have been in a position to meet the monthly public service wage bill.
The Government’s deepest gratitude goes out to the banking executives who continue to provide an essential lifeline to support the state’s monthly liabilities to its employees.
We are also grateful for the considerable sums of money that Mr. and Mrs. Don Ward and Mr. Allen Stanford have contributed toward completion of construction and outfitting of the long delayed National Library.
On another key issue, the United Progressive Party Administration moved swiftly in delivery of our most far-reaching Manifesto undertaking.
In a matter of months, not years, the character of governance has been changed dramatically and permanently in this country.
To refocus on the Sunshine Government’s central campaign issue, it would be useful to revisit “Agenda for Change”, the UPP Election Manifesto that the electorate so resoundingly endorsed.
Others are revisiting the Manifesto quite selectively.
Let us look at the first page of Agenda for Change.
This is how the first page of the UPP Manifesto reads:
“A UPP Government will take Integrity Legislation to the first working session of Parliament.
This Legislation will provide for Whistle Blower Protection.
Integrity will be the bedrock of the UPP.
Transparency and Accountability will be our watchwords.
The Government will be the servants of the people, that is our commitment.
The people’s purpose always will come first.
Ours will be a fully participatory democracy in which the people’s voice will be heard.
We will respect the law.
We will defend and strengthen our institutions of democracy.
These values will be constants when we have Government in the Sunshine.”
Integrity and prevention of corruption legislation, together with freedom of information legislation, is already in place.
This has profoundly changed the rules of government in Antigua and Barbuda.
This regime of morality legislation will long serve its principal purpose of protecting the Antiguan and Barbudan people from any resurrection of the predatory practices of our former rulers.
The Sunshine Government has been applauded internationally for this definitive departure from the practices of the past and for our dramatic delivery of such landmark legislation, of such potency, in such concentration, and in so short a space of time.
In another definitive break with the past, we have chosen legislative sanction to formally empower the National Economic and Social Council, the NESC.
The NESC guarantees and mandates the national community’s ongoing participation in and influence over the shaping of government’s social and fiscal perspectives.
This is a quantum leap in the transition to a truly participatory democracy in Antigua and Barbuda.
The NESC is not intended to constrain the authority and the obligations of the Cabinet to formulate and order policy in its conduct of the nation’s business.
The NESC is not envisaged as a parallel Cabinet.
Nor is the NESC conceived as a substitute for Parliament.
The NESC’s essential function is to provide counsel to the Government on overall economic and social policies and to build national consensus on major economic and social perspectives.
The NESC’s role is not intended to be project specific.
Other mechanisms will support specific investment and development projects.
The Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority is one such mechanism.
The Investment Authority will operate a transparent investment policy that will curtail individual political subjectivity in the approvals process for major investment proposals.
The Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority will be a regulatory, promotional and facilitative agency, a one stop shop, that will coordinate the inputs and impacts of the various ministries and agencies of government on investment projects.
Whatever permutation is used, transparency, accountability and integrity are bedrock fundamentals of the new political and government culture that has come with Government in the Sunshine.
The Presentation of the 2005 Budget ahead of its relevant fiscal period underlines another dramatic break with the past.
Previously, splurge and spend without a Budget and without fiscal constraint was the norm for an administration whose conduct was the epitome of anarchy in government.
The 2005 Budget Presentation repeatedly emphasises the Government’s resolve for fiscal discipline and accountability.
This is demonstrated in the declaration that the statutory sanction of Surcharge may henceforth be invoked against public officials responsible for loss of public funds.
Public officials, in this case, include elected officials; and everyone else receiving a stipend from the public purse.
All of this is quite relevant as we look forward to significant new private investment in the New Year and a relatively substantial public sector investment programme for 2005.
Among those investments prospects are approved proposals for high-end resort projects centred around Seaforth and Pelican Island.
Another is the Alliance for Development through Education and Empowerment that the government has struck with the Allen Stanford group.
The confirmation of this Alliance has been the subject of much speculation; with many persons playing to the media and playing the media, largely on emotive issues, and largely on emotional bases.
The debate in the media generated much heat and little light.
The emphasis has appeared to be on agitation rather than on enlightenment on the critical social and economic issues relevant to the Alliance for Development through Education and Empowerment.
In the Keynote to Agenda for Change, I dealt squarely with the state of our nation and with the options available to us.
I recall one of my comments in that Keynote:
“The condition of the nation and the impact of Globalisation and trade liberalisation calls for all sectors of the Antiguan and Barbudan society to embrace change and to consider all options for flexibility, adaptability, sustainability and social justice.”
At the heart of social justice is the need for equitable distribution of the country’s resources.
Critical to this, is that well paying jobs should be available to all who want to work.
The Stanford development of the lands ceded to Asian Village Antigua Limited promises a large number of such jobs.
The economic impact of this development has received scant attention in the public discourse that followed the 2005 Budget Presentation.
The reality of 12% unemployment, with 1,000 young job seekers entering the labour force every year, does not appear to have merited analysis, serious assessment or even passing reference.
While pundits ponder on concocted contradictions, the Government is proceeding with Ministerial teams to set out implementation agendas for Project Opportunity, Employment to Ownership and Education and Training for our nation’s young people.
Later this month, the $10 million fund that Mr. Allen Stanford has contributed to assist in the development of micro and small business startups will be in place for disbursement through the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank.
Public Servants wishing to transition from employment with the state to ownership of their own business ventures will be allowed first call and a fast track on this fund.
I urge such persons to act quickly to apply for support from this fund.
“Project Opportunity” is one of the fundamentals of the Alliance for Development through Education and Empowerment.
Project Opportunity will ensure equitable distribution of the substantial volume of projects that will be outsourced by the Stanford Development Company.
The head of the Stanford Group has confirmed that that unit of his group will be transformed into a management services company.
That management services company will then outsource an estimated 70% of its assigned projects to local contractors.
On the strength of the development of the lands that the previous government had gifted to Asian Village Antigua, local contractors can look forward to a $1.4 Billion windfall in project assignments over a period of 36 months.
With this Stanford project, and with Seaforth and Pelican Island coming on stream, we could well be on the way to full employment.
Some commentators are expressing difficulty understanding the Government’s decision to proceed with the legal actions we have filed in the Asian Village issue.
The fact is, the Government finds it difficult to permit a debtor, still owing the state the major portion of the purchase price for the Asian Village properties, to walk away from that debt obligation while pocketing an obscene profit on transferring the property to Mr. Stanford or to any other investor.
Mr. Stanford understands our position in this matter.
The Government also has a problem with the substantial amount of money due to the entity from which Guiana Island was acquired by the former administration.
If Asian Village Antigua is to profit from transferring the relevant lands, such a transaction should make provisions for offsetting the money owed to the Government by Asian Village, as well as for the money allegedly owing in respect of Guiana Island Farms
The Asian Village lands will be mobilised in Antigua and Barbuda’s economic development programme.
They will not be allowed to continue to go to waste, while they can be converted to productive enterprise that will deliver immense and manifest benefits to the Antiguan and Barbadian people.
As we respond to the march of time, it is necessary for us to stake stock of ourselves.
This applies to government as it applies to individuals.
The population is increasingly mystified at the seeming immunity of members of the former government whose misdeeds are believed to be well documented.
There is obvious need to buttress the executive arm of the justice system.
My Government has been in office for nine months.
It can be said that the past nine months has been a period of gestation.
I have had the opportunity to assess the wisdom of my initial decisions on the allocation of portfolios and the deployment of my Ministers.
I recognise the need for immediate action to buttress certain areas of the organisation of government at the executive level.
I take this opportunity to place on public record, my appreciation of the work done by the members of my government.
Government cannot be a static mechanism.
We shall always be required to be a dynamic organism in an ever changing and increasingly challenging environment.
The United Progressive Party is an instrument of change.
We, too, must change as circumstances evolve.
In this context, I shall very shortly announce a number of adjustments in the allocation of portfolios and in the assignment of Ministries of the Government.
I again wish you a Happy New Year.
I pray God’s Blessing for you and for your loved ones.
I pray God’s continued Blessings on our beloved nation.
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