A reaction by Celia Gordon:
The provision of laptops to Dominica students is a good thing. In fact, such an activity should be done in a more systematic and organized manner on a national scale. It should not be an activity of the Labour Party utilizing incumbent advantage. When this is done, it invokes a negative reaction to the recent DNO story, “Roseau MP gifts laptops to secondary school and college students.”
According to the story, “Parliamentary Representative for the Roseau Central Constituency, Melissa Poponne-Skerrit donated 91 laptops to secondary school and college students of that constituency.” The Member of Parliament stated,
“This is a gift from me, your Parliamentary Representative…as your Parliamentary Representative, recognizing that some had no devices and with the support of the political leader and the Labour party, a decision was made to provide laptops for children in the Roseau Central Constituency.”
Clearly, this is not an activity of the government of Dominica in the same way that the distribution of laptops in the Vieille Case/Penville constituency was secretly done in the name of her husband and Parliamentary Representative of the constituency, who happens to be the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance.
The political actors are deliberate in making a clear distinction between the actions of the government of Dominica and what is purported to be theirs as the Parliamentary Representative of their respective constituencies. Hence, the challenge to the resource-deprived Parliamentary Representatives of the opposition held constituencies and in fact serving political notice to all politicians including the new political party to act in like manner, if they intend to attract public support. The Labour party makes no apology for blurring the line separating its cheeky partisan politics from its irresponsible national governance strategy.
The question is when will this shallow, political brainwashing game come to an end? Will it ever, with the DLP in power?
There are more than 10,000 primary, secondary and college students in Dominica. However, everyone is running with a story giving praise to Melissa for “gifting” 91 tables/laptops as a Labour Party Parliamentary Representatives, who boasts that the items are personally funded by her in the same way that she claimed that the school feeding program was sponsored by her Foundation, which is partly funded by MMC, the biggest agent of the government managed CBI program.
In the Roseau constituency, there are probably more than 3,000 students. Therefore, the gifting of 91 laptops to a carefully selected few of loyal Labourites is a drop in the bucket of needs. It is now left to be seen how the Ministry of Education and the government of the state of Dominica will be addressing this matter. More importantly is the issue of limited and costly internet access in Dominica, which negatively impact the effective and optimal use of the gifted laptops. For this reason, students in the rural areas without internet access are deprived of opportunities.
Sadly, the mendicant state of our society causes us to rely on the ‘benevolence of sneaky politicians who come bearing gifts rather than working hard to meet our needs. In return, the politicians expect our unquestioned eternal loyalty and shamelessly remind us when election comes around. This feeds into the programmed mindset our people that facilitate the acceptance of bad governance and poor performance of our government for such a long time.
Dominicans must be prepared to scrutinize and assess the performance of government on more substantive socio-economic, constitutional and governance performance indicators. The citizenry must start to question why has our economy been on such a rapid downward trajectory for many years as reported by the ECCB, IMF and World Bank. They must ask why regional and international economic monitors like CarCRIS have been downgrading our economic prospects and credit worthiness under the DLP administration.
Our government has an obligation to facilitate the provision of the needs of the populace through state actions. In that regard, it is expected that government must put in place social safety nets to protect the less fortunate citizens. However, the performance of government cannot be dependent on how well it takes care of the private needs of pockets of citizens in return of partisan loyalty and a vote to remain in power.
As responsible, civic-minded citizens, we need to appraise the performance of our government based on indicators such as:
i. the extent to which government protects, safeguards and affords the enjoyment our fundamental constitutional and human rights;
ii. the ability of our government to ensure a progressive socio-economic environment with sustained growth in the country’s GDP, low unemployment rates, low debt to GDP ratio, low rates of crimes and poverty etc.;
iii. the facilitation of a vibrant private sector that creates employment and drives economic activities rather than public sector sponsored programs like the NEP, which is used as a mechanism for artificial reduction of the high rate of unemployment rather than for the purpose the program is said to be designed; and
iv. ensuring that we have a functioning educational system and a reliable health care system.
It is time that we start thinking more profoundly about our future as Dominicans. We need to start analyzing our country and its developmental needs and realize that the DLP administration has failed Dominica over the last 20 years and for Dominica to grow, Skerrit and his government must go!