Spot the Budget . . . Suckers Only Can Play!

If some of us could begin to understand how cycles of natural events become stimuli for rhymical changes regulated by the thought process, we would find that this biological axiom does not apply to the government, whose static position is terminal.

Every budget presentation is a sack of rotten balawou not so freshly wrapped. They offer similar fantasies. The same 3,000 jobs. The same number of hotel rooms to be constructed. So much capital to be borrowed from external sources. So much in grants. So much revenue anticipated. The authority of the House to seek more millions of dollars in overdraft facilities.

There is never anything to say about revenue generated during the previous years, where it was applied, the quantum of loans obtained and serviced, and the extent of the national debt. The total private sector contribution was the construction of 94 hotel rooms during the last fiscal year. Government’s contribution was the construction of office complexes. The roads are horrible. School buildings cry out for repairs. Social services are on the speedy decline. The hospital and health centers almost abandoned.  

For the first time, taxpayers are being told to demand from the public servants the goodies their hard-earned taxes were supposed to provide. Once again public sector managers are being accused of beating the system. It leaves one to wonder whatever happened to the Audit Department!

The Prime Minister is the principal component of public sector management. He sees no reason to take blame. Our concerns regarding his globe-trotting are totally disregarded. He leaves his boys in the corridors of power, to fight among themselves at the expense of proper public sector management. Then the Prime Minister feigns surprise at the consequences. The seemingly relevant association of Model Farms with good management is perhaps a compliment. But to suggest this is the main cause of their status from malaway to middle class is obnoxious and decadent. For quite apart from revealing that malaway is a designed social condition, it appears that anyone fortunate enough to cross over the poverty barrier has only the prime minister to thank.

Our lives and happiness depend largely on the hardworking banana farmers throughout the country; not on Model Farms with its non-Saint Lucian manager. It is possible the public recognized the prime minister’s insult to the banana-farming community and put it down to a lapse in his thinking. It is for us who still can think to expose the malignancy.

The constructive achievements of a people are far more impressive than the tradition of elaborate ceremonies and imitations of English Peers in our House of Assembly, where the Westminster model is applauded with reverence instead of curiosity, and from which form Saint Lucians who have transcended antiquated political doctrine are adulterated with impunity. It is fortunate that the standard of debate in the House is archaic, and to a great extent senile.

The rhetoric from some parliamentarians is embarrassing, makes the country a laughingstock. The combination of words makes no sense at all, contains little substance most of the time. One MP, while holding forth on the subject of licensed gambling in Saint Lucia, suddenly segued into a speech on calypso. A colleague reminded him of the subject being debated.

The alleged $7 million to be derived from a development levy on the banana industry, as a means of generating revenue, was recommended by a contributor to the STAR. The public statement by the Leader of the Opposition—that the levy was a tax on the farmers—will not provide political mileage, if that is the expectation. Capital expenditure derived from loans are, to a large extent, applied on infrastructural development, which directly benefits the banana and hotel industries. An across-the-board development on both of these industries is easily justifiable: the levy will supplement repayment of loans being met from automobile levies and insurance levies.

The practice of encouraging the masses to consume mass quantities of imported goods and commodities they can ill afford generates a negative mental condition. The constant occupation of finding ways and means to meet their monthly payments nullifies intelligent thinking. It may serve the government, but it also makes void the declaration that the budget was designed to uplift Saint Lucians generally.

Our hard-earned foreign exchange goes to Japan, fills the pockets of hoteliers, the foreign tour operators, the foreign contractors and the privileged Saint Lucian class. They suck out the marrow, then leave the rest of us to fight over the tossed dry bone!   

(The preceding first appeared in the STAR of April 9, 1988)