The DFP’s Stands in Solidarity With the Faculty and Staff of DSC
The Dominica Freedom Party (DFP) stands in solidarity with the faculty and staff of the Dominica State College (DSC) in their current industrial action. Further, we call on all Dominicans who yearn for a better future to support these courageous individuals in their struggle to make the DSC the sort of pillar of national development that it ought to be.
The DFP view this latest protest action as so noteworthy and heartbreaking because this protest so sadly exposes the underlying pathology of this Labour Party led government. In a nutshell, this current government keeps pursuing shiny objects they believe will gain it votes while negligently ignoring transformational national projects. In other words, this government seems committed to bling, not authentic development. Development experts tell us that it is the knowledge, imagination, and creativity of a society – not natural resources per se – that drives its development. For example, Japan is a resource poor country but filled with educated, skilled, motivated people whom it leverages to be one of the largest economies in the world. Therefore, few things can be more important than developing an education ecosystem that equips a nation with 21st century knowledge and skills. This pursuit should be the central pillar of any well-led developing country. But we simply cannot create such an innovation and skills economy without our tertiary educational institutions being the bedrock – the keystone species – in such an ecosystem.
Why then is our primary tertiary education institution in such an appalling state of neglect? The DFP argues that this is because the present administration is blindly focused on building monuments not people. In their zeal for vote getting projects they become negligent – even incompetent – in their duty to build transformative institutions and enterprises. No one drives by and sees transformative institutional capacity such as a well-functioning education system. But things such as handouts and apartments are highly visible acts of the largesse of a King to his subjects. So these multiply rapidly with much fanfare while the true driver of a 21st century economy lies in ruin and despair.
The facilities that most lie in ruin at the DSC – the science labs, the information technology labs, the applied skills labs, a modern library – reveal just how uninformed the current government is about what drives national development. Smart, innovative spaces for the engineering arts and computer facilities for the digital era are the key spaces that make a college world class. Yet it is these very spaces that are most neglected. How can utterances about creating a digital economy or a blue-green innovation economy be taken seriously when the smart spaces for developing these skills lie abandoned?
The non-filling of several senior DSC positions also shows how little the current administration cares about developing those forms of national capacity that are not shiny and immediately visible. Surely there is little doubt that competent persons exist to fill these jobs. These positions are the senior leadership that can grow the DSC into an innovation powerhouse. Yet in an economy where jobs are scarce, such substantive positions are simply left unfilled. Why? One must believe it is because people who support the government are not yet identified. So once again building deep national capabilities is sacrificed on the altar of partisan concerns.
The Dominica Freedom Party calls on the current administration to abandon this destructive approach to national development. We ask them to abandon a superficial, monument-building strategy aimed at winning votes. We ask the government to instead focus on building an authentic economy, an authentic civil society, and an authentic democracy. All our futures depend on it.
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