Following the presentation of the National Budget 2019/2020 to Parliament on July 30th by Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, the Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lennox Linton said the country remains backward in several key areas. While presenting his Budget Response to parliament, Linton said the Skerrit-led administration has failed the Dominican peoples in many areas since their 19 years in government.
Linton said Dominicans have been finding it hard to survive in private and public life, saying the DLP government has embraced bribery, impersonation, fraud, abuse of power, purchase of overseas votes, and media muzzling among other things to make life harder for the people.
According to the opposition leader, the idea of a new Dominica being touted by the present administration is nothing but a fluke.
“A new Dominica in which it is OK to lie, cheat and steal as pathways to the seat of government,” Linton said sarcastically. “A new Dominica in which the resources of Dominica are diverted to enrich foreign interests while Dominicans suffer.”
Linton said the DLP government has made Dominica last in all good things for too long. According to him, the country over the last 19 years is –
- The smallest, slowest growing economy in the eastern Caribbean
- Last in the ability to facilitate citizens in meeting their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter
- Last in the ability to employ its own citizens
- Last in the quality of the social and economic infrastructure
- Last in the international trade of goods and services
- Last in the provision of credit for productive purposes
- Last in the provision of proper health care services
Linton said Dominica under Skerrit has remained “last for too long…behind in too many things.”
He promised that the United Workers Party which he represents is ready and fully equipped to bring positive changes and grassroots development to the nation at large.
“We remain fully committed to ensuring sustainable, harmonized growth and development in which every Dominican has an opportunity to have an education; proper health care; a job; an affordable home; a reasonable standard of living and quality of life, in a peaceful and secure social and natural environment,” Linton said.
He called on all Dominican citizens home and abroad to be patriotic and committed to the good of the country, adding that God is ready to uplift the country to a new level if the people would only play their parts.
“We call on our nature island people to continue to put the country first, irrespective of partisan allegiance,” he said. “Let us not place party before people and country. Let us unite over this common desire for change, knowing that those whose failure and destruction we seek to change from cannot present us with the change which we need.”
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