As Saint Lucia moves towards "better days," a campaign pledge that has proven both elusive and problematic for the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) to fulfill, there is a heightened sense of unease throughout the nation. The government has imploded under the weight of massive borrowing, bigger government, and a failed experiment that advances the belief that small and struggling economies can buy their way out of poverty by further embracing the concepts of a welfare state, which has essentially dwarfed the aspiration of the Saint Lucian people to attain real economic advancement.
Instead of a dynamic economy that offers jobs, product development and opportunities where people can pursue economic advancement, Saint Lucia, under the SLP and its predecessor, the United Workers Party (UWP), has become helpless.
From VAT, with all of its confusing and undefined processes, to a simple visit to government agencies where attitudes toward the public are often condescending and rude, mounting cases of unpaid wages to workers, inflation, economic and political uncertainty, Saint Lucia seems on edge.
This isn't a serious approach by the government for a holistic revamp of the Saint Lucian economy. What economists observe is a focus on putting out little fires here and there, which only serves to prolong the inevitability of what is to come.
The most pressing question on the minds of Saint Lucians is when will better days come? Better days are nowhere near. What is near is a stalled and declining economy. In fact, what is visible is the desperate need for visionary leadership with fortitude to face uncertain times and to navigate present realities.
Island states such as Saint Lucia, despite political daydreamers' assertions, continue to exist with low growth, high debt, burdensome deficits and stubborn unemployment. And there is nothing in place to cushion or shield the nation against economic risk and to protect its financial credibility. Many will acknowledge that Saint Lucia's fiscal spillage is in permanent disorder with runaway borrowing, increased social spending, extravagant recurring expenditure, misfired stimulus packages, and non-productive tax exemptions that compound the non-existence of economic and political reform.
But it is no surprise that the political directorate does not have a plan to achieve growth and thus stabilise the economy. And no country, especially one that is unable to establish a local agricultural base adequate to meet the demands for food, can ever survive an economic recession with substantial growth.
The fallout will come as the masses withdraw from a political system that is out of touch with new economic realities; and the weight of external factors will continue to have significant impact on government revenues, its debt to GDP ratio of 74 per cent, increased deficits beyond 7.6 per cent (2011/2012), and higher interest rates.
CENTRE STAGE
Melanius Alphonse