The ALP Cannot Reverse The World-Wide Trend

Every day, the supporters of the Antigua Labour Party point to all of the negative economic developments that are happening in Antigua and they blame the United Progressive Party for everything.

Antiguans and Barbudans should pause and carefully examine the local scene in the context of what is taking place globally, before they rush into judgment about either the capacity or the ability of the UPP to manipulate global economic events.

The stark facts are - there has been a global economic meltdown. In the United States of America, the loss of jobs now exceed 500,000 per month and President Obama, who has just assumed office and is about to inject over $850 billion into the stalled economy, is not being blamed for the world-wide crisis, even though the crisis began with the greed of speculators on Wall Street.

We have to depend on tourism for our main supply of money. Britain and Germany are our mainstaey in this industry and their economies are in recession. Serious recession.

The ALP is exploiting this fact and claiming that they can do better. The voters of this country must remember what the performance of the comrades used to be. They must remember when government employees had to wait for a period of four to six weeks before they received their just pay. They must remember how the banks used to charge them for being late in their monthly payments and ho9w the Banks didn't care, even though it was the government's fault for paying salaries and wages late. At that time, there was no global economic melt-down, but the ALP could not cope with the country's finances and pay government employees on time. Now, they are catering to the greed and selfishness of some people, by promising to abolish most of the taxes that are now being charged but they are not saying where they will get the money from to run the government smoothly and efficiently.

What Prime Minister Spencer ought to do, is to sponsor an open economic debate during which the finances of the efficient governance of our country will be discussed. Coupled with this, the performance of the UPP during the past five years ought to be highlighted. Then, let the people decide.

We are not asking for a fish-market style brawl like the one that occurred in Parliament recently. Any discussion ought to be governed by basic rules of behaviour that ought to reflect on the earnestness and seriousness with which the parties intend to handle our affairs. Honesty and uprightness ought to be the hallmark of such an encounter. Those who fail to rise to the high levels expected of them ought to be treated by both the viewers and the electorate with the scorn and rejection that is equal to their public performance.

In fact, the global economic downturn has been far worse than has been either anticipated or calculated. Japan, the world's second largest economy, has just realised that the industrial economic dryrot has extended far deeper than was thought. Thus they will have to scale down their economic activities more drastically than they had intended.

The Republican opposition in the United States Congress has been balking and dragging their feet in supporting the economic measures proposed by the Democrats. We do not see any alternative but to support the large expenditure to kick-start the stalled and shrinking US economy. To say that the whole system will eventually correct itself is both unscientific and based on empiricism that has not yet been tried.

In the interim, the US economy regresses further and further into the minus arena and Antigua & Barbuda, which depends on its residents in the United States for remittances from abroad and on the viability of US businesses based here, finds itself in a choke.

In spite of this, the ALP claims that it can do miracles and blames the UPP for the difficulties encountered here and not the world-wide recession and economic meltdown. We are of the view that Stanford is feeling the effects of the world-wide economic pinch. Is this why he has suddenly stopped his international giveaway of millions of dollars in the Twenty-Twenty cricket and has now laid off over 200 workers at the Stanford Development Company?

The international economic meltdown has made all good things come to an end. Ford is in trouble. General Motors is in trouble. Chrysler is in trouble. The whole motor industry in Britain is in trouble. In Japan the great profitable Toyota is in trouble. In Italy, Fiat is in trouble. All the banks in the world are in trouble. Sony is in trouble. Thousands of businesses n the United States have closed down or laid off workers and have downsized. The United States is broke. Iceland is broke. Ireland is broke. Britain has never had it so bad.

However in spite of all this, the ALP blames the UPP and says that they can do better. One ALP announcer makes reference to deals where Stanford had signed the workers cozy conditions at work until 2010. What he forgot to say is that all those deals have been eroded by the international economic meltdown and that Stanford has downsized.

We hail the UPP for keeping Antigua & Barbuda on a steady economic course. We state categorically that the ALP cann0ot do better by reversing the world-wide economic trend.