Venture into political election 2

We Vincentian voters, wherever we position ourselves, whether in the ULP, in the NDP, in the DRP, in the Green Party, or trusting in our own insight, we sense a need for a different, a better SVG. Our whole population has this yearning.

We may want the international airport or a spiritual charter as well, but what we deeply feel for is for our nation to be renewed, and that we become involved and enhanced. In this election, we can begin to cultivate this enhanced democratic environment and liberating experience as we stop being just voters and move forward to become voter citizens with a venture consciousness.{{more}}

At the Round Table, last session, it was clear that more and more, the Unity Labour Party was in favour of an unchanged spirit in SVG (albeit with more, many more incomplete projects, and more social divisions.) Our venture into constructing a renewed nation has to begin during this election season with a citizen challenge to the NDP, and a venture of faith in ourselves as citizens.

OUR CHALLENGE TO THE NDP

As citizens of SVG, and as the whole population of Vincentians, we look to you even now, to open the arms of the NDP to listen to our voices of support, criticism, rejection and our call for a new politics of inclusion in the midst of division. Show us that we can look forward to structures and opportunities in which we can consult, propose to, and oppose the NDP administration. Is it too much to suggest that, at some of your public meetings, a non-NDP voice be invited in advance to address a matter of concern in the community.

One approach to our economic development since independence has been to discriminate against citizens sharing in high value businesses. The BOSVG, a local/hybrid business, was a minor exception. We would like to see and contribute to a policy that makes room for a large percentage of citizen shares in businesses that depend on local factors like land and labour, whether cerebral or other. Why has the Buccament Resort not been set up by Vincentian majority business, doing what a man of unknown integrity has done? Could it be that Governments and citizens think that kind of business is only for others, not us? Will we get more business graveyards like Mr Bigger Biggs’? We want policies to facilitate big opportunities to build SVG, or else the education revolution will be for the unambitious and for low value exports.

HALTING THE DECLINE OF OUR DEMOCRACY.

As voter citizens, sadly, we experience the elections as an anti-democratic process, in which all political parties promise too much, play too much on our emotions, celebrate their superiority, our ignorance, then pat themselves on the back, saying: “We Got Them For Another Five Years.” If the ULP gets us for another five years, the season of renewal will be undone. One week or so after the elections, Round Table would like to host a session or two with citizens and political venture citizens on the prospects for renewing our Vincentian environment in the context of a new administration in office. The matters that must concern us will be cultivating citizen consciousness in support of open government. During the ensuing periods, as we enlarge our knowledge about our own purposes, and the dynamic of the political struggles, the causes of national development, justice, and citizen ventures into democratic governance will take more prominence.

During this time of electioneering, our focus is on how the process of campaigning can prepare the ground for a citizen conscious NDP pathway to a new SVG.