PM Roosevelt Skerrit commended Montreal Management Consultants (MMCE) for doing a great job in Dominica. He credited them with constructing quality climate-resilient homes on the island, saying the company must be applauded and not criticized for building homes for people.
The prime minister said MMCE has revolutionized housing construction in Dominica, and the CBI program funds have helped greatly in this regard.
“They are the developers, they take the risk and we provide the financing utilizing the citizenship by investment program,” Skerrit explained. “In the last project they fund-rolled the expenditure and we reimbursed them with CBI funds. If we do not have such partners it means we would have to go to banks to borrow money to do all these things for you in Dominica. And how much can we really borrow in a small country like ours? So we have found a very interesting formula; and when some of you were criticizing us for using that formula to build homes in Dominica…”
Meanwhile, he blamed the opposition for putting stumbling blocks in their own paths when it comes to demanding for electoral reforms. He said the opposition is their own enemy when it comes to their demands for national ID cards and cleansing the voter’s list. According to him, the government wrote to the opposition revealing the amendments and the clauses in them, and then asking the opposition to disclose what they want and do not want in them, but the opposition failed to respond to the call.
“We wrote to the opposition in Dominica, for example, and said, ‘Look, these are the amendments; tell us which of these clauses you don’t agree with and which you agree with so that we can have a sensible discussion over the matter,’” Skerrit said. “They are yet to submit to us that which they do not agree with and that which they agree with. We sought to go to parliament a second time, because we removed one or two clauses in the amendments, and the same thing happened.”
The prime minister blamed the opposition for delays on electoral reforms, saying they refused to play ball; and that the government can execute a free and fair election even without the clauses highlighted in the amendments submitted by the government.
“The only people who have been the stumbling-block in the issuance of national ID cards for the purposes of voting are the opposition,” he disclosed. “We are fully in support of all of the measures required to have electoral reforms; but notwithstanding these changes, we have always had free and fair elections in Dominica. We’ve had eight elections since we attained independence 41 years ago, there’s every assurance that whenever we have elections, we’ll have free and fair elections that will allow everyone on the voter’s list to vote in Dominica.”
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