Hon Lester Bird Sunday Broadcast for August 1st, 2010

“Bankrupt UPP must step aside now and allow a tried and tested Labour Party to rebuild the economy”



Fellow Citizens and Residents of Antigua and Barbuda



Once again the hapless UPP regime blames the Labour Party.



Despite the fact that the UPP has been in charge and mismanaging the economy for six years and four months, Harold Lovell, the Minister of Finance, says the woeful state of the nation is the Labour Party’s fault.



His is a sad and empty refrain.



And everyone knows that it is a desperate plaster to try to cover a very large sore caused by the UPP.



They know – and you know – that they have no answers for the economic problems their policies have created.



If they did, they would have implemented them and you would have been better off.



It is the UPP that went on a borrowing spree over the last six years and four months; it wasn’t the Labour Party.



It is the UPP that frightened away investors causing the economy to contract; it wasn’t the Labour Party.



It was the UPP that imposed income tax and government sales taxes that took money out of people’s pockets; it wasn’t the Labour Party.



It was the UPP that squandered over $1.5 billion that they took out of your pockets, with nothing to show for it.



Not a new job.



Not a new sustainable project.



Not a new hotel.



Not new infrastructure.



The truth is that in its first two years in office, the UPP lived on the success of projects started under the Labour Party; it has been downhill ever since.



Harold Lovell says that I do not acknowledge there is a recession.



He is wrong.



I do acknowledge that a recession hit the world last year.



But the economic morass into which we are sunk today began long before the recession.



It did not start with the recession.



The UPP is now trying to hide their obvious shortcomings behind the recession.



The recession has merely exposed even more starkly the failures of the UPP regime to manage the economy properly.



Further, other countries are pulling out of the recession, but not Antigua and Barbuda.



When the financial institutions collapsed in the United States in late 2008, the Labour Party warned that the UPP had to put in place immediate programmes to safeguard the economy.



The Finance Minister at the time, Errol Cort, told this nation that we were talking rubbish and that if there was a collapse in the US, we could rely on tourism from Europe.



He said the nations had nothing to fear.



So, the UPP did nothing.



Even when we warned that the contagion would spread to Europe because the toxic assets offered by US financial institutions had to be spread into Europe,



Errol Cort and the UPP dismissed us.



Cort’s statements are a matter of public record and they stand as testimony to the UPP’s failure to put measures in place to mitigate the fallout that was bound to come.



In fact, the UPP spent its years in office borrowing money and increasing the national debt.



Every few months, the regime was boasting that they had issued more bonds at high commercial rates of interest.



They were boasting about borrowing to prove somehow that borrowers had faith in their supposedly superior governance.



Again, the truth was that most of the bonds were taken up by financial institutions in Antigua who now face the real danger that the UPP regime cannot repay them.



And, where institutions outside Antigua and Barbuda bought the bonds, they only did so because they were backed by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.



Now, the UPP regime had to go to the IMF for a loan that is packed with conditionalites to pay foreign creditors.



Imagine, the UPP has borrowed money to pay back money they borrowed.



They are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.



And, they think that we are all so stupid that we would believe that this is a good thing.



Harold Lovell asks if the Labour Party is against paying local contractors with the money the UPP regime is borrowing from the IMF.



The answer is that the Labour Party wants local contractors paid, and we want them paid first.



But, we want to see measures in place that would maximise the use of our assets to earn the country revenues from which we can pay our people.



And, you and I know that the UPP has no plan for the restoration of the economy and the reigniting of economic prosperity.



When they were busy borrowing money to spend on wasteful projects, the Labour Party warned them that projects had to be sustainable and revenue earning in order to pay back the debt.



They ignored us.



So, the national debt stands at over $2 billion that we know about – a debt that has reached this huge number because of the UPP’s mismanagement.



We know that the UPP has also incurred what is called “off balance sheet” debt. That is debt that they have hidden in public corporations or government-registered companies, but nonetheless it its debt that has to be repaid.



And the only answer they have to the dire circumstances into which they have plunged us is to blame the Labour Party that has not been in office for six years and four months.



The bankruptcy of the UPP regime is fully exposed.



But, you must ask yourself:



Did the UPP not impose income taxes on you when Baldwin Spencer pledged that they wouldn’t?



Did the UPP not inflict government sales taxes on you when Baldwin Spencer promised they would not?



Are you not now talking home less money than you were when the Labour Party was in office?



Are you not now worse off now than you were when the Labour Party was in government?



Is the cost of living not higher now than it was then?



Is unemployment and poverty not greater now than it was in March 2004, when the UPP took hold of the government?



Is crime not now higher than it ever was under the Labour Party government?



My friends, Harold Lovell is brass-faced to try to tell you that you are better off under the UPP than you were when the Labour Party was in office.



The facts – and your own experience – speak for themselves.



You know what you have to endure today to make ends meet.



Let me say a word about debt under the Labour Party.



Yes, the Labour Party incurred debt.



But the debt was incurred for projects that were obvious and still serve our country well to this day.



We built an international airport.



We built Heritage Quay.



We built the finger pier that allows so many more cruise ships to come into our harbour.



We built a telecommunications infrastructure.



We built all weather roads to connect up the country; to make road transportation easier and swifter for locals and visitors.



We made Antigua a venue for International Test Cricket with the Antigua Recreation Ground to which the UPP had to revert when their incompetence led to the shameful abandonment of the poorly kept Sir Vivian Richards stadium.



We built the Royal Antigua Hotel which the UPP regime gave away to one of their political campaign supporters for a song.



We built the Mount St John Medical Facility that the UPP left to languish for five years, and then opened only because their folly in neglecting it and making it available to the people of this country, could no longer be prolonged.



We also rebuilt the economy six times in five years when our country endured six hurricanes between 1995 and 2002.



The UPP had not one storm with which to cope.



The point is that the debt the Labour Party incurred was for projects that serve our country to this day, giving people employment and sustenance.



The projects earn government revenue and contribute to our gross domestic product.



By comparison, the UPP has burdened our nation with huge debt and there is nothing to show for it but that eyesore of an unfinished car park, high crime, high unemployment and growing poverty.



My friends, Harold Lovell’s statement – as everything that comes from the UPP – demonstrates that they have no answers but to blame the Labour Party.



They are a bankrupt group unable to devise and implement a plan for growing our country’s economy.



I call upon them to move aside and let a tried and tested team, with a proven track record of success. Get on with rebuilding our economy and restoring prosperity.



The UPP is only prolonging the agony by continuing to squat in the offices of government.



They would be doing our people a service for the first time if they would get on with by-elections or general elections so that our nation can be relieved of them and the burden they place on our country.



I remind everyone that the Labour Party’s leadership is made up of successful businessmen, experienced trade unionists, professionals in banking, finance, and law, and competent negotiators.



Ours is a broad Church inclusive of experience, expertise, youth, energy and knowledge.



We are ready to put these skills to work immediately to turn our beloved country around.



But, on the eve of by-elections or general elections we will give the UPP no ideas for, in the past, they have stolen our ideas and implemented them badly.



Right now, it is time to get rid of the UPP who cannot mend the economy that they broke, but are trying to fix the electoral process to cling on to power.



We are ready for by-elections or general elections.



We know that you want to be freed of the UPP.



We know that you want the economy to repaired, and prosperity restored.



We know you want to see jobs, construction, and vitality in the economy.



We are ready to restart that process; to reignite the engines of growth; to re-energise our people and our country.



The UPP losers have squatted long enough.



It is time for them to go.



I thank you once again for listening, and I pray God’s blessings on us all.