Latest update May 10th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 06, 2019 News
By Peter Richards
(CMC Feature) – In a year when an opposition political party used the motion of no confidence to topple a government in a Caribbean country, Mia Amor Mottley relied on the electorate to become the first woman head of government in Barbados, while Gaston Browne and Dr. Keith Mitchell also used the ballot box to consolidate their hold on power in Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada respectively.
The motion of no confidence appeared to have been the main strategy for opposition political parties in St. Lucia, St. Kitts-Nevis. Montserrat and Haiti, while in Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica, the opposition sought to rely on what they termed “failed budgetary policies” in calling for general elections in the hope of replacing the incumbent governments.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) was ending another year without getting a favourable court ruling as it continues to battle the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) over the results of the 2015 general election that it lost by an 8-7 margin.
“It is unconscionable that a matter of this importance that it seems that it is only the petitioners are urging anxiously that the matter be tried. We will not rest on it. I promise you that because it is too big, it is too important, there is too much at stake for us to simply say that this is just another matter of sour grapes,” said NDP leader Dr. Godwin Friday.
The latest delay in the election petition hearing came after Justice Esco Henry announced that she was recusing herself from the matter after finding out that 12 matters had been set down for her to preside, when the election petitions were scheduled for trial.
Three and a half years ago, Bharrat Jagdeo was among candidates of the then ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) who had hoped to continue their more than two decades hold on power in Guyana.
The PPP lost the presidential and general elections for control of the 65-member National Assembly by a slender one seat, but as 2018 came to a close, Jagdeo saw hope to reverse the 2015 results by March 2019, after he successfully tabled a motion of no confidence against the David Granger-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Coalition Government.
In late December, Jagdeo came to the National Assembly armed with his motion and telling legislators that the government had been a total failure and had not kept its promises to the Guyanese people who voted them into office.
“The people out there, they demand that we pursue this, and I know there are 33 members who have been growing fat on the perks of office and wish that this motion disappears”, he said, adding that the Coalition Government had mismanaged the resources of Guyana and that is the main reason behind his decision to file the motion against the government.
“We have made the case that this government is totally useless to the people of Guyana. The longer they stay there, the more damaging it will be to our future”.
Prior to the vote, the government was confident that the motion would not succeed, particularly after it had been able to successfully present and debate the national budget for the 2019 fiscal year, a few hours earlier.
But government back-bencher Charandass Persaud had other ideas. When the vote was called, he stunned his colleagues and voted with the PPP, resulting in the downfall of the coalition government.
Persaud later said his conscience had been “stifled for long” as he defended his decision.
“I feel that almost 80 percent of the Guyanese populace would want to have this government removed just for what has not been done during the three and a half years that APNU/AFC (A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change) has been in office,” he said.
A stunned Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo said while government would be examining its options, it was clear that general elections would be held in 90 days except if the Parliament decided otherwise by a two-thirds majority.
He also urged peace in the country.
“We want our people to maintain the peace, the good order, the stability of our country. We want nothing to happen in our society that will affect the stability and peace and we want nothing to happen that will affect the business community in this particular period that you have bright business,” Nagamootoo said.
President Granger, who has been travelling to Cuba for medical treatment after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a disease in which malignant cancer cells form in the lymph system, said, while he would be meeting with Jagdeo early in the new year, “this is not a crisis which could dissolve into any type of confrontation.
“This is a constitutional process, which can have favourable outcomes for the nation… There is no cause for alarm and there are no grounds for any form of disorder and we will continue to work to provide a good government and deliver public services to the people and to work even more closely with the opposition,” Granger said.
The leader of the main opposition St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP), Phillip J. Pierre, who has also filed a motion of no confidence against the Allen Chastanet government, said the Guyana situation held a lesson for regional prime ministers.
“What it shows is that governments – Prime Ministers must understand that winning elections does not mean they have the support of the majority of the people,” he said.
In St. Kitts-Nevis, it was a different scenario. Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris out manoeuvred Opposition Leader Dr. Denzil Douglas in his motion of no confidence, resulting in the latter indicating that a “grave injustice has been committed against the people and their right to hear their representatives debate matters”.
In October, Premier Donaldson Romeo staved off an attempt by disgruntled opposition legislators in Montserrat to bring down his administration when a key government backbencher indicated that he had no intention of supporting a vote of no confidence in Romeo’s four year old administration.
“We should withdraw the vote of no confidence. If you want to change the premier there is a way to do it,” said former agriculture minister Claude Hogan, who held the key to the survival of the government.
On May 24, Barbadians dumped their frustration of the Freundel Stuart administration into the ballot box and gave 52-year-old Mottley and her Barbados Labour Party (BLP) total control of the 30-member Parliament.
“The victory is not mine, not the Barbados Labour Party, this victory is the people of Barbados victory,” she would later say, as the 66-year-old Stuart accepted “full responsibility” for the defeat of his incumbent Democratic Labour Party (DLP).
Stuart, who entered elective politics in 1994, would later announce his retirement from active politics and has since been replaced by attorney Verla DePeiza, as the DLP’s new leader. But the party has had to remain outside of the corridors of Parliament after Bishop Joseph Atherley, one of the successfully BLP candidates, switched his allegiance to become Opposition Leader, insisting that the move was not in retaliation for not getting a ministerial position.
“It is definitely not a reaction to that. I have indicated that to the Prime Minister and to my other parliamentary colleagues. It is definitely not a repudiation of the Barbados Labour Party platform or policies,” Atherley said.
Mottley, the island’s eighth prime minister, joined a handful of Caribbean women who have lead governments in their respective countries, such as Dame Eugenia Charles in Dominica, Janet Jagan in Guyana, Kamla Persad Bissessar in Trinidad and Tobago, and Portia Simpson Miller in Jamaica.
She had promised Barbadians that her administration would move swiftly to deal with the socio-economic problems facing the island and during the seven months in office, entered into a US$290 million agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), implemented policies that resulted in hundreds of public workers being put on the breadline, improved the island’s foreign reserves, reducing to 123 percent the debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio and informing Barbadians that the local currency was no longer in danger of being devalued.
“To say we have come a long and far way would be to make the understatement of the year,” she told Parliament in December, adding “what we assured the people of Barbados six months ago, was that we would work assiduously and selflessly to turn the outlook and the fortunes of this country around.
“We promised that we would stop the decay and decline. That we would stop the haemorrhaging, and that we would return pride to, and confidence in, the Barbadian brand. We promised six months ago, that we would bring Barbados back to where it belongs . . . in the region, in the world and in the psyche of Barbadians, living at home and abroad.”
Mottley said that she was proud to report “using every yardstick and every other measure available to me, that this noble mission…has been accomplished (and) Barbados is punching once again above its weight division”.
Prime Minister Mitchell seems to have made it a habit of winning all the seats in general elections in Grenada. In March, he led his New National Party (NNP) to a historic clean sweep of all 15 seats, making it the third time he has achieved the feat in electoral politics in that island.
The 71-year-old Mitchell, who led the NNP to a consecutive sweep following his 2013 victory, said the poll was “the most stress-free I have ever had in my 34 years in politics”. He later called on the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be part of the social partners that will chart the way forward for the tri-island state. The invitation was not accepted.
Not to be outdone, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Browne called the general elections nearly two years ahead of schedule and bettered the 2014 results of 14-3 by a 15-2 margin, again wiping out the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP).
“This victory is your victory and as they say, the voice of the people is the voice of God,” Browne said.
But the victory was soured a bit after Asot Michael who had returned to the Cabinet after being removed late 2017 over his arrest in London in relation to a bribery allegation, was forced to resign soon afterwards after his name came up in transcripts of telephone conversations between British billionaire Peter Virdee and his business partner, Dieter Trutschler, in a court in the United Kingdom.
In the recordings made by German authorities, Virdee said Michael had asked him for a car for his mother, two million US dollars and a watch.
Michael insisted that he was neither a party to the court proceedings nor charged with any wrongdoing, but said he would resign “to allow the government to fulfil its obligations to the people, without any distraction”.
But Michael was not the only politician to be shown the door in Cabinet. Less than 24 hours after he was demoted as a Cabinet minister, the newly appointed Minister in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in Trinidad and Tobago, Darryl Smith, was fired.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley in April had earlier removed Smith as the Sports and Youth Minister, after the Sunday Express newspaper in an exclusive story exposed his alleged unwanted sexual advances on his personal secretary Carrie-Ann Moreau, which she detailed in her witness statement in support of her claim for wrongful dismissal at the Industrial Court.
It’s alleged Smith’s unwanted advances to the former staffer resulting in a TT$150,000 (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) settlement by the Ministry using taxpayers’ money.
In September, Haiti unveiled a new government, two months after Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, who faced a motion of no confidence, resigned following days of deadly violent protests against fuel price rises. But by yearend, President Jovenel Moise and his new Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant, were appealing for calm after opposition parties staged violent street demonstrations calling for their removal after accusing them of not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous government over PetroCaribe, an oil alliance of many Caribbean states with Venezuela to purchase oil on conditions of preferential payment.
Several people have died as a result of the protests and western countries, including the United States and Canada have appealed for calm and a return to normalcy on the French-speaking CARICOM country.
Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow has had a change of mind after earlier indicating to members of the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) that he would have stepped down before the 2020 general elections.
Not so however in the case of Premier Dr. Orlando Smith in the British Virgin Islands, who in June announced that he would not be seeking re-election as leader of his National Democratic Party (NDP) and that his decision came after ‘much thought and prayer’ with family and colleagues.
“And so, when the NDP comes together in its upcoming Convention, I will not seek nor accept the nomination to lead the party into the next election,” the premier said.
Lennox Linton was re-elected un-opposed as the leader of the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) in Dominica, and even as he urged citizens to give “change a try to rev up the engine” he and several other opposition legislators will return to court early next year on charges ranging from obstruction of justice and incitement, in relation to public disturbances that occurred in the capital, on February 7, last year.
At yearend, the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) was staging street demonstrations that the police described as unlawful in support of electoral reform in Dominica.
Trade unions throughout the Caribbean flexed their muscles in 2018 over a host of issues, with teachers, medical practitioners, public servants, law enforcement officials, media workers among those workers demanding better working conditions and increased wages.
In Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, government policies led to thousands of workers being sent home as the authorities moved to stop the bleeding occurring at various state agencies.
The Rowley administration shut down the state-owned oil company, PETROTRIN and replaced it with three new entities after complaining that the oil company was losing billions of dollars annually. It said the compensation package for workers could amount to more than one billion dollars (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents).
The powerful Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) had vowed to “vigorously oppose” the shutdown of PETROTRIN with the union’s president general, Ancel Roget, saying at one stage “the proposal they have for PETROTRIN is madness and we have rejected that outright”.
In Jamaica, the government said it would move to recover the mis-use of funds at the state-owned oil company, Petrojam, following the damning report of the Auditor General.
The report, titled ‘A Review of Aspects of Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) and a Comprehensive Audit of Petrojam Limited’, by the Auditor General has catalogued a series of lavish parties and unapproved sponsorships as well as glaring human resources breaches costing millions of dollars (One Jamaica dollar=US$0.008 cents).
“Where it is clear in the report that there was a case of the mis-use of public funds then I am going to direct the board to take such civil actions as are necessary to recover those funds,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness told a news conference.
But while Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were experiencing difficulties with their oil industry, the United States oil giant ExxonMobil announced another major discovery offshore Guyana, increasing the estimated recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block to more than five billion oil-equivalent barrels..
“Guyana is well poised to truly forge ahead in the 21st century. As a petro-development state we will, however, need to strategically invest in a people-centered and balanced manner, where we utilise our non-renewable resources for structural transformation and improving people’s lives in the short-term, while concomitantly providing the foundation to allow us to transition in the medium- and long-term to a post carbon economy,” said Dr. Mark Bynoe, the Director at Exxon Mobil’s Department of Energy.
The impact of climate change on Caribbean economies was highlighted in 2018 when Prime Minister Holness, who is the chairman of the 15-member CARICOM grouping, addressed an International Monetary Fund (IMF) event in Washington that brought together key stakeholders, including senior policymakers, multilateral development partners, and the private sector to “explore incentives to shift the focus of policies towards building resilience and innovative disaster risk financing policies and instruments that would help in the region”.
Holness said that the region is facing rapid urbanisation in coastal zones with corresponding falling populations in rural areas and out islands.
“Some more than others are facing the pending loss of limited land mass due to sea level rise,” he said, noting that one common theme is that the cost of repeated natural disasters has been underestimated “and this is making sustainable development and prosperity much harder to achieve, especially as we are confronted with many development challenges which affect our economic growth”.
The IMF would later call on Caribbean countries to do “even more” as they seek to become resilient to natural disasters with its managing director, Christine Lagarde, noting that while Caribbean countries have, for sure, made some good progress, “they can do even more, especially with regard to improving the resilience of public infrastructure and key economic sectors to natural disasters and climate change”
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is predicting that Caribbean economies will grow 2.1 percent in 2019 even as it acknowledged an international scenario marked by what it describes as “greater uncertainty”. ECLAC also projected that the region will end 2018 with average growth of 1.2 per cent.
Caribbean countries continued to be labelled as tax havens by the European Union and even though some had been removed after strongly objecting to the label, by yearend, Trinidad and Tobago remained on the list.
Caribbean governments sought to consolidate their policies with regards to economic growth, staging a special summit in Trinidad and Tobago that examined the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) that allows for the free movement of goods skills, labour and services across the region.
“The whole idea of a CARICOM Single Market and Economy had to be confronted and not just kicked down the road,” said host Prime Minister Dr. Rowley, adding “we were brutally frank. There were hurdles we refused to accept”.
Prime Minister Holness, who chaired the two-day meeting, described the deliberations as being “intense frank and decisive” noting that the leaders had all re-committed to ensuring its successful implementation.
“We have fashioned a path on the way forward for advancing its implementation in a manner that can be measured and for which we can be held accountable,” he said, noting that the dialogue with representatives of the private sector and labour “was of immense value and we were quite pleased to hear their strong commitment to integration and to making the CSME work”
But even as the regional leaders were patting themselves on the backs regarding creating an environment for regional businesses to grow, the move by the Trinidad-based Republic Financial Holdings Limited (RFHL) to acquire the operations of Scotiabank in Guyana, St. Maarten, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, was not sitting well with Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda.
Prime Minister Browne has said that his administration will not provide a vesting order to facilitate the sale, while Georgetown is worried about future competition in the industry.
RFHL said that the purchase price is US$123 million, which represents US$25 million consideration for total shareholding of Scotiabank Anguilla Limited; and a premium of US$98 million over net asset value for operations in the remaining eight countries.
The Suriname-based CARICOM Competition Commission (CCC) has already indicated that it would assess any impact the proposed acquisition would have, in accordance with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) that governs the regional integration movement.
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