MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 6 June 1997.
Online here https://web.archive.org/web/20120416011318/http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/fanflame.htm.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
|
“The time has come” the Walrus said, |
And again this from Prior who wrote:
|
They never taste who always drink |
Or this from Shelley:
|
Power, like a desolating pestilence |
And finally this from the Babylonian Talmud:
He who says what is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours, is a saint. He who says what is yours is mine, and what is mine is mine is a wicked man.
And now over to me. The rout of the Vaughn Lewis government in St. Lucia must tell us something. It cannot be wished away. There is a trend in the world. Major has gone, after 18 years of Conservative rule. Chirac in France promising greater austerity, loses a 200 seat majority and in comes the Socialists. Is there a new wind of change blowing? In Africa Mobutu is gone. Gone with the wind after 32 years, gone in the twinkling of an eye. Apartheid after 42 years was swept away in a flood-tide of struggle and internal rot. It is the time to talk of many things, of cabbages and kings. It is a time too, to paraphrase Gray, “When Grandeur hears with a disdainful smile, the short and simple annals of the poor.”
Grandeur and grandiose projects ride heedlessly over the poor and their environment.
Bird however survives here. From internal self government in 1956 to 15 years after independence in 1981 except for five short years between 1971–76, the Birds rule here. In all, a total of 36 years. It surpasses the rule of the Duvaliers 1957 to 1990, a total of 33 years. Or that of Balaguer from 1965 to 1996. And certainly that of Compton and his hand-picked “son” Dr. Vaughn Lewis from 1964 to 1997 except for three short years between 1979–82. That amounts to a 30 year reign. Will the Bird era end as did the Compton era. The Bird era ends with Grandiose projects and Grandeur with a disdainful smile rides rough-shod over the nation.
The picture is this: Antigua has a population of 65,000, St. Lucia one of 145,000. St. Lucia shows increasing population, Antigua and Barbuda shows declining population. Despite migration inflows the population of Antigua and Barbuda falls. Outflow of goods, despite inflow of labour, is not increasing here. We have not made use of the OECS Single Market or Caribbean Common Market.
Economically however there are similarities between St. Lucia and Antigua-Barbuda, the two are responsible for 50 per cent of GDP formation in the OECS. St. Lucia 29 per cent and Antigua and Barbuda 23 per cent.
All economic predictions are that St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda have levelled back to the other OECS countries with about 2.5 per cent growth per annum. Unemployment has grown in St. Lucia to about 20 per cent. In Antigua and Barbuda unemployment has grown, but an unreliable government has no reliable figures! Grandeur looks with a disdainful smile at the mayhem it has wreaked on the poor.
Both St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda suffer from insufficient savings for local investment; from low production from investment in human and physical capital; from insufficient attention to maintenance, in this respect Antigua and Barbuda takes the cake, public buildings deteriorate at an alarming rate and so does public property, nothing is maintained, all is left to waste and ruin; both St. Lucia and Antigua suffer from marginalisation of nationals in economic life; both have very weak statutory bodies, or parastatals as they are called in modern economic jargon.
Antigua and Barbuda however, suffers from a problem so acute, that St. Lucia does not compare, namely the high cost of goods and services. And it is getting worse, not better. It is the most serious economic problem. Antigua being a high cost destination is a stumbling block to investment, local or foreign. The problem has to be addressed. Antigua however is reeling under a debt burden, the likes of which St. Lucia can only imagine. That too is an inhibitor to development, economic, social or cultural.
But Antigua and Barbuda shares a great deal of political similarity with St. Lucia. Once within the last 30 years in both countries, did a government fall. Compton the Patriarch of St. Lucia, fell in 1979 only to return in 1982. V.C. Bird the Patriarch of Antigua fell in 1971 (really in 1968 but actually in 1971, the failure to take Bird out in 1968 has cost Antigua and Barbuda much blood, sweat and tears and contributed heavily to some 15,000 people leaving here between 1981–1991. More than one-fifth of the population fled or flew in search of realising themselves anywhere but here!) only to return in 1976. The second coming, without a doubt, was worse than the first.
The similarities, the political similarities, continue. V.C. Bird passed power from himself to his natural son Lester Bird, the second son. Along the way the right of inheritance of the first born had to be blown away. Twice second son Lester, joined the opposition in struggles against corruption targeting his own first born brother and father. In time, and in power however, he himself was to tolerate his own corruption and naturally condone the sleaze of his colleagues. Bad matters became worse. Sleaze was and is everywhere. It were as if “Power like a desolating pestilence Pollutes whatever it touched.”
Compton had no natural son. He had to adopt one. He adopted a distinguished economist and regional public servant, Dr. Vaughn Lewis, from the distinguished Lewis family of economists and jurists. Whereas Lester won one term, in office, Vaughn Lewis won his personal election to office.
After winning Prime Ministerial office in his next test at the polls Dr. Lewis was to perish losing his own seat, which he had won 14 months earlier by a handsome margin, losing later by the slim margin of 49 votes to a political neophyte, Ms. Sarah Flood.
Lester Bird is yet to face his first test at the polls since winning prime ministerial office. On the whole, for the 14 months Dr. Lewis held the office of Prime Minister it seems he ran a pretty clean ship in terms of sleaze from within his Cabinet. The same cannot be said of Lester Bird. Everything and anything has happened under his watch from passports to lands, to outrageous purchases, to crooked deals involving the giving away of the national patrimony for an unholy mess of pottage. Sleaze knew no limit. Only the public can begin the cleaning of the tons of sleaze in the Bird stables.
Vaughn Lewis, on the other hand, suffered from the heavy baggage left by Compton, including the manner and style of his selection. It obviously unhinged the ruling party. Lester Bird was to unhinge his own party, replacing party with a personality cult. The personality cult increases in direct proportion to the decline of the party and government. All that is left is the personality, who considers himself a Maximum Leader, but in terms of accomplishment is really a Minimum Leader. A Minimum Leader, marginalising his own people by the development of foreign enclaves and high-spending grandiose un-economic schemes like a $100 million hospital and a $67 million office complex. This formula is a recipe for economic and political disaster. It may be a bonanza for the corrupt. But this gross mis-direction of funds will cost Antigua dear, dear.
But St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda suffered from a similar problem, similar economic problem. They sowed the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind. A thorough-going economic problem.
It is an axiom of development economics that industrialisation by import substitution is viable until economy is substituting all the manufactures it can produce economically. In this stage the increased imports generated by increased income are paid for with the foreign exchange released from the pursuit of import substitution. When import substitution is exhausted the economy, in strict terms, reverts to stage one, where traditional or even non traditional exports become the engine of growth. Or, some import substitutes can be traded internationally.
Both Lester Bird as Minister of Economic Development and the Compton government in St. Lucia, failed. They failed absolutely to take either country through the stage of import substitution. It was a telling failure. If we consider the OECS as the Antigua’s and St. Lucia’s natural domestic market for import substitution, then all this OECS Single Market was not just a situation of opportunities wasted. The OECS Single Market became, in reality, mere decoration. A contrivance of bureaucrats for political prettification without meaningful content. The politics of the Birds and Compton did not match and fell far below the economic imperative of the time.
In consequence, both Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Lucia, became more and more dependent on the traditional bananas and tourism in the case of St. Lucia, while for Antigua & Barbuda, tourism and its ancillary services, construction etc., became the only game in the economic park.
Strictly speaking then, if politics reflects economics the political fate of the St. Lucia Compton-Lewis regime ought to be reproduced in the Bird-Bird regime. That is, decline and fall. History, of course, will prove me right or wrong.
One of the glaring failures in Antigua with its one-industry economy, is the failure to diversify even the one-industry tourist economy, structurally.
It is obvious to anyone with economic sense, that once all-inclusive, package-tour tourism was unavoidable, a new sub-tourism sector had to be created. This had to be local. So that there would be a local point of savings, accumulation and re-investment which was non-existent in our foreign-owned tourism sector.
The Bird regime failed to do this, absolutely. Instead, it invested over $100 million in Royal Antiguan which became an economic disaster. The government cannot now even sell this Italian white-elephant, there being no-takers, except at peppercorn prices. Had the capital used on Royal Antiguan been used to create a locally-owned tourism sector, geared to the all-inclusive-package tour market, successive Bird administrations would have done something. They did not see. They could not see. They were blind-folded to the economic imperatives of the time, by their penchant for corrupt wheelings and dealings in big foreign schemes.
Instead the same up-scale foreign owned hotels rushed into the package-tour all-inclusive market. As a result the hotels were degraded. Degraded and down-graded hotels in a high cost destination is a certain recipe for decline in tourism. That plus the lack of promotion of tourism by the government, made decline in tourism terminal. It is in such a condition are we now. It cannot be denied, nor can it be gainsaid.
Further, investment in tourism stimulated channels for food imports, and there being no import substitution, stimulated demands for foreign produced manufactures. This caused both a balance of payments deficit and a deflation in the home market. Though, for a time, the increased demand for foreign food and manufacturers would lead to an expansion in the buy-and-sell commercial sector – department stores and supermarkets. But in time, contraction in that sector would come about as increased tariffs – customs duties – would lead to tax evasion, which, inevitably, would cause the commercial sector to contract. That was the effect of the increased tariffs introduced by Lester Bird. Even age-old Barclays Bank, long a giant on the scene felt the shocks and had to close a Branch.
Besides, if the 80’s boom led to the increased purchase of consumer durables, food and clothing from abroad, it also brought too many commercial enterprises into the field. Because the old commercial sector had not moved to invest in import substitution industrialisation, with the contraction of the 90’s there were too many commercial houses, leading to a situation where too many cooks spoil the soup, and many lost market share. The Big Fish will eat the sprats. That process is on-going now, and local restaurants after the increased service tax were replaced by Chinese restaurants owned by Chinese migrants. Once more nationals were marginalised. The local private sector seems not to know what had hit it and in desperation it is clutching at straws.
On top of this awful situation the unchecked growth of government workers, (party followers getting jobs without work) not only lowered the level of productivity all around in the public service, but made it very difficult for the government to control, expenditure on employment, aggravated by declining productivity. Between 1986 and 1993 the number of government workers increased an incredible 27 per cent, from 5,880 to 7,420. In the three years since Lester Bird it has continued to rise to over 8,010, despite the so-called ‘Home-grown’ structural adjustment. Nothing changed. It was patronage, as usual, from the public purse funding declining productivity and output. Government dis-savings became chronic. Borrowing was impossible, since the government’s credit-worthiness was shot to pieces. Borrowing had to be on extraordinary terms, in an already debt over-burdened country, with debt was accumulated on all un-economic projects.
It is abundantly clear that a new dispensation is called for which can activate the productive sector, and the creation of a platform for new regional and internationally traded activities. More importantly, a halt in the decline of tourism, by creating activities and sites which stimulate demand in relation to increased promotion. Vital to all this is reducing Antigua and Barbuda from a high-cost destination. It involves the elimination of waste, the reduction of tariffs, greatly improved though not greatly increased taxation, allied to a programme of import displacement.
The point is a new dispensation is called for, and more necessary here now than in St. Lucia. That is why this Walrus has spoken of many things; of men who talk but never think; of men who say what is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine, and so wickedly give away the national patrimony for a mess of greasy and grisly pottage. That is why I tried to lay bare the economy to show the root of the current wickedness. It is economic. It is historic. It has to be historically and economically corrected. That then is a matter of political change.
Last updated on 30 May 2022