By *Jomo Thomas
“If we don’t handle our independence very well, colonisers will come back in the form of investors.”– Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe.
The former Zambian vice president was emphasising the importance of economic sovereignty and warned that without proper governance, foreign powers may reassert control through investment.
Some have argued that many countries, including SVG, have little of anything over which they can assert sovereignty. I am not of that ilk. I am a strong believer that even as we strive to improve the conditions of our country and the lives of our people, great care must be taken to protect and preserve our patrimony for the next generation.
I am not a believer in the fire sale notion of development — a feeling of helplessness that brings on desperation that leads us to give away the whole house for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver.
A post-independence leader claimed that SVG is nothing but a big stone with good soil. I radically disagree with this conception of who we are. We are much more than sea, water and sand.
The disclosure about the removal of sand from North Leward is a case in point. The head of BRAGSA is seen salivating over the disclosure that SVG made $3.4 million for the removal and sale of sand and gravel in North Leeward. The material, we were told, was removed without the planning authority’s proper permission. There was approval in principle.
But why rush to complete the deal and risk short-circuiting the system? Would an ordinary Vincentian be accorded a similar privilege? Are we experiencing an Animal Farm kind of reality where all of us are equal, but some are more equal than others? Would we have fast-tracked this sale if a billionaire investor with no known affection for SVG had not been the dealmaker?
Evidently, there was no attempt to gain widespread local buy-in and support. There was no proper environmental impact study or economic feasibility study. Too many of us don’t see our country as a living organism. We see sand, stone and trees. We don’t take the necessary time and care to understand what would be lost if we hastily move the earth and cut out vegetation, or recklessly discard our waste into rivers or the sea.
All we see are a few dollars or some menial jobs. This mindset has to be changed if SVG is to survive as a nation led by Vincentians, primarily for Vincentians. The current trajectory does not bode well for such a future.
PM Friday’s administration seems prepared to follow its predecessor’s policy on foreign direct investment, with slight tinkering here and there. One recalls St. Clair Leacock’s proclamation that we have to put the brake on foreign direct investment. Leacock’s outburst might have reflected frustration with an eye on the political clock. He evidently thought that every new investment proposal announced by the Labour government would make it difficult, if not impossible, for his party to win. The view is similar to that expressed by former PM Mitchell in 2015, that if the ULP were allowed to open the international airport, the NDP should kiss governance goodbye for a long time.
Time and history have proven both views to be fallacious. However, we cannot afford to embrace foreign direct investment without an eye on what’s in it for our country and people.
Sandals built and owns a beautiful tourist destination at Buccament. They intend to build another at Mt Wynne. Can we truly say that, with all the giveaways, waivers, and concessions, SVG is a net winner in this equation? Are we even close?
Have we calculated what we are losing by ripping out all of the forest on the western corridor of our country to accommodate tourism development? Are we putting our health in danger when we cut down oxygen-producing trees and replace them with concrete? Are the jobs a beneficial trade-off? Have Caribbean governments ever done a no-cost benefit analysis on tourism’s impact?
Global Port Holdings, a Turkish company that manages 33 ports in 21 countries, plans to invest EC$250 million and take over our cruise ship port. Is this really a 30-year lease or an agreement with an option to buy? Would this company soon be bidding to manage or buy the entire Kingstown waterfront, including the new port? Would we sell it all on the premise that the company is a “success story”? Have we done our due diligence?
Did we pitch the idea of moving the cruise ship terminal from Kingstown to Arnos Vale, Campden Park, or Chateaubelair to drop the Kingstown-centric approach to our country’s infrastructural development?
A few months ago, I shared a platform with Dr Francisca Savoldi, a human geographer and political ecologist who has spent her intellectual career studying and analysing port development worldwide. Dr. Savoldi argues that citizen engagement has the potential to redress the port-city relationship fundamentally and is a guarantor against neo-colonial domination of countries through the capture of ports. Her thoughts represent a useful reminder of what it means to be sovereign and democratic. Development, she says, must be for all the people and not just the privileged elite.
With the alleged sale of Chatham Bay in Union Island completing the foreign takeover of the Grenadines and Sandals’ domination of the western corridor of our island, the leasing of the cruise ship berth to Global Port Holding in Kingstown, Vincentians may soon become foreigners in their own land.
Underdevelopment is a scourge on all our houses. Countries in the Global South, oppressed and exploited for centuries, are having a hell of a time providing for the needs of their citizens.
My warning is that we don’t give away the whole house. Let us leave parts of it for the imagination and enjoyment of the next generation and those who follow.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
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