Mr Speaker,

I rise to debate this Budget with the rising tide of my personal history threatening to choke me or silence me.  My history, Mr Speaker, is a history of struggle.  Not necessarily of struggle to reduce principalities and kings but a struggle to empower the ordinary people whom I have dedicated my life to serve.  My relationship with the people I serve has given me some measure of authority but it has also saddled me with a heavy responsibility.  A responsibility to the very people I serve to level with them, to be honest in my dealings with them and to demonstrate the level of transparency which they expect of me whether I am in office or not.  This yoke of credibility creates a peculiar schizophrenia in me which quivers and oscillates between the collective responsibility to my Cabinet colleagues and the spiritual nexus I share with the people who created me and sustain me.  It is this dilemma, Mr Speaker, which I gave expression to in 1995 when I was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations.  I had the temerity to state that I was going to New York not to serve a particular Government but to serve the People of St Lucia.  And when the interest of the Party which appointed me was at variance with what I perceived was the interest of the country and the people, I had no qualms about surrendering the high office and returning to the People in search of a solution.

There is a serious dichotomy in this country between the Government's claim that it is working and performing more than any previous Government had done and the mass disillusionment with the Government for its non-performance and its schizophrenic profile in saying one thing and doing another. What, as a Government, we must come to terms with is the public perception that this is so.  To challenge this label, our Government should be assiduous in its transparency.  We must avoid the clever-devilry of giving a concession with one hand and taking it back with the other.  We must not use flashing mirrors to blind the eyes of our people. They must be convinced that the Government is honest and straightforward with its citizens and then our people will be prepared to march to hell and back behind them.

A striking example of this double speak is the Governor General's reassuring words that DISSONANCE STRENGTHEN'S DEMOCRACY.  This is a very valid observation but it certainly screams out in contradiction of the Government's decision to sack three senators who showed a hint of dissonance in not supporting a Government Bill in the Senate.  Such an act in not countenancing dissonance or critical opinion on the subject of a Bill before the Senate seemed alarming to me.  The Senate is a Chamber of Review and this in itself pre-supposes a capacity to criticize and a capacity to adjudicate.  Against this background, the decision to fire a Senator who voted against the Bill is curious to say the least, but the decision to dismiss Senators who abstained seems a direct affront of the democratic process.  This action weakens democracy and certainly does not strengthen it. 

Conversely such action sends a distressing message about free speech and free expression.  It strengthens autocracy and highly-centralised decision-making. 

Mr Speaker, I can never forget the ringing lines of John Milton in his clarion-call for the freedom to speak:

Give me the courage to speak,
To argue and to utter freely
According to my reason.

Over the years, Mr Speaker, I have fought incessantly along with many of my colleagues to ensure that this freedom remains a proud achievement of the Labour Movement.  Our Manifesto proudly asserts this new-found transparency and I am delighted that Her Excellency's injunction confirms that there is room for dissenting views.

For the past three years, Mr Speaker, I have worked assiduously among my colleagues without uttering a single word of dissent although there were many decisions which I did not concur with.  My silence even earned me the sobriquet of Minister Moo-Moo.

E P I L O G U E

Mr Speaker,

I have tried in the course of this address to extrapolate from Her Excellency's Throne Speech the positives which should give direction, purpose and guidance to the Government and its programmes.  I have identified areas in which the actions of the Government veered away from the principles of the Throne Speech.  I have warned repeatedly about this kind of ambivalence and suggested that this might be one of many factors which have eroded popular trust in the Government.  I concede that the disenchantment is not islandwide.  There are places in the rural areas where people are pleased and grateful for the basic amenities which this Government has brought to them.

On the other hand the urban areas and their suburbs are more solidly in the embrace of the Media and a strong antipathy to the Government is certainly taking hold in most communities.  The public gallery is as empty in the course of the Budget Debate as it was when the previous Government was plumbing the depths of its unpopularity.  I have tried to explain and analyse this phenomena.  It took the United Workers Party thirty years to follow this graph of decline and it is almost inexplicable that this Government should race headlong down this road in three measly years after the brilliant record of performance we have heard from every speaker in this debate.  I have no doubt that the Government has worked seriously and purposefully.  They have undertaken serious projects which were designed to change the very structure of Government.  They have responded to natural disasters with an urgency and hands-on immediacy that we have not seen in this country before.  The land slippage at Babonneau and Marchand received almost model responses.  The freakish sea-storm which destroyed the Coin-de-Lance seafront and rendered seventy people homeless was tackled with a rapid response which must have surprised the people of Soufriere.  The new settlement is resplendent and should warm the hearts of all Soufriere people.  The Prime Minister showed a personal interest in coping with this disaster and the others which preceded it.

In the course of the Prime Minister's Budget Address it was obvious that fundamental issues were being tackled such as the Review of the Constitution of Saint Lucia, a Review of the Civil and Criminal Codes and a legislative programme that is almost mind-boggling.  Amidst all this, there have been many instances of inexperience and bungling, but this is inevitable, since the electorate chose to return a young and inexperienced cadre of Representatives to run the country.  It was a paradigm shift from the over-the-hill image of the previous Government.

As Budgets go, this is a Classical Budget.  It does all the things that pre-Election Budgets do.  It purports not to tax the electorate.  It balances beautifully as modern economies try to do.  It doles out the pork-barrel demands of the Communities.  It caters for the contribution of savings to the investment programme.  It spreads sugar where the cake is burnt as in the duty concessions to the Taximen.  In fact it is a clever Budget but somehow it fails to address the central dilemma of the Government.  Why should such a show of brilliant governance result in the alienation of all the important sectors of the Community.  Why have we alienated the Media?  Why have we alienated the Private Sector?  Why have we alienated the farmers?  Why have we alienated the Public Servants?  Why have we alienated the Teachers?  Why have we alienated the Churches?  Why have we alienated the trusted Labour Stalwarts?  Why have we alienated the Opposition?  Why have we alienated some of our Regional Colleagues?

Mr Speaker, this situation calls for some serious in-depth introspection.  Modern Public Relations people insist that an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.  I am not about to suggest that this Government should concentrate on image at the expense of performance, especially as the Government is already well-endowed with Spin Doctors and Whizz Kids.

Perhaps the solution might be to keep the collective ear of the Government nearer to the ground.  I am, Mr Speaker, the most travelled member of the Government; my frequent absence from this Honourable House attests to this.  But whenever I am in the State, I travel around the length and breadth of St Lucia, to ensure that I am in touch with what the ordinary man on the street is saying.  This is the touchstone of my politics.  So I am able to give my colleagues advice and guidance as to what people are saying on the ground.

During the discussions on the Smart Duah affair I was amazed to hear one of my colleagues asserting firmly that "the majority of the people of St Lucia would like Smart Duah deported immediately".  I couldn't believe my ears.  I wondered how the fate of this young man could be decided on the basis of false assumptions of this kind.  Mercifully my public statement on this issue resulted in the kind of inadvertent referendum which revealed that the public voice was in fact in favour of his remaining in St Lucia.  Sometimes we must be humble enough to bow to the voice of the people who have put us in these elevated positions.

The Smart Duah affair directly affects my portfolio.  I am the one battling abroad for our country.  I am the one engaging the Human Rights activists abroad.  I am the one advocating a progressive foreign policy position on the international scene.  I am the one representing the thousands of St Lucian overstays abroad.  I am the one battling with Secretary of State Madeline Albright on the deportation of convicted criminals back to St Lucia and the other parts of the Caribbean.  I felt that on the basis of these international considerations my colleagues should have given me a more sympathetic ear instead of dropping the option of the legal guillotine on the issue.  At one stage I wondered whether my advocacy of Smart Duah's claim was a negative factor against him.  I even speculated that if the legal voice which anticipated and denounced his claim had spoken on his behalf the legal cabal might have listened.

Mr Speaker I have no illusions about my locus standi in the Government.  The appointment of two Deputy Prime Ministers indicated clearly that I was two removes from the red-meat of decision-making.  I have no quarrel with that and I have worked in tandem with them and with all of my colleagues.  I do not harbour rancour in politics and I have absolutely no ambitions.  My only ambition is to see a sound people-oriented Government for St Lucia in the New Millennium.  Given the state of the opposition this Government can re-organise itself to perform this national duty.

For my part, I am extremely contented with my role as the Foreign Minister of this country and I am focussed on the business of finding the projects and the assistance to strengthen my colleagues in their search for a better quality of life for our people.  If my colleagues are dismayed by my public statements on the Smart Duah Affair I want to reassure them on three points

Mr Speaker, I beg to support this Budget for the year 2000-2001 bearing in mind the ryders which the Throne Speech has so well adumbrated.

I thank you.