Prime Minister Godwin Friday has acknowledged complaints that his government is not doing enough to counter opposition narratives four months after it came to office.
The prime minister, speaking on Hot 97 FM on Friday, said he believes in action over words but admitted his government could do more to communicate its actions to the public.
He said that in addition to the 60-day promises that the government has fulfilled in keeping with its election promises, people are seeing improvement in physical infrastructure, such as roads, even as the government works on restructuring the economy.
Friday, who is also minister of finance, legal affairs and justice, economic planning, and private sector development, gave the interview as he prepares to travel to Washington over the weekend.
In the US capital, the prime minister will attend his first Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, taking place from Monday through Saturday.
He said things “are challenging, but we are making headway.
“I’ve been working continuously, practically since I got this new job, and we’ve been seeking to, essentially, manage the situation that we inherited, right, while at the same time delivering what people need, what they tell us that they need,” he said
Asked if he knows that he inherited a “bad hand”, the prime minister said he did not want to use that term, describing it as “old hat that some other people used.
“But the point of the matter is this: we have inherited a country where the financial situation is dire,” the prime minister said.
He said that his government has been making assessments of it “in the broad scope, in terms of the central government finances, in terms of growth projections what we have, in terms of determining what kind of revenue the government will have, looking broadly, also at not just central government, but the statutory boards and companies and so forth, how they’re performing, because all of these things have been put in place to perform certain functions of government”.
Friday said that as a new administration, “it is necessary for us to take stock as to where we are.
“That process is not an overnight process. I mean, I could come on the radio and announce something and so forth. That is not my style. I want to be able to have concrete information so we could bring to public say, ‘This is the situation of the country. These are the things that we need to do to turn things around.’
“Because we are going to turn things around. We know how to do it. But first of all, we have to know where we are. So, when you hear the fellows from the previous administration talk about how they’ve done so well and they do this and so on. Don’t believe that,” the prime minister told radio listeners.
“… it’s easy to do what they did. … they say they do all sort of things, say they build this and do that and you get to a point now where the debt is essentially unmanageable if we continue on the course that we are going, that we inherited — and we will not continue on the course — but if we do, it will become a serious problem, not just for this generation, but for the next.”
Asked about the debt-to-GDP ratio on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being the worst situation, the prime minister said, “It’s difficult to say, but if you’re rating it, I would give them a one or two at the very most.”
“… the point of the matter is … there’s always a capacity to borrow, because there’s emergency means that you can do there…
“… essentially, they backed us into a corner,” he said of the Unity Labour Party administration, which lost the November 2025 election when Friday led the New Democratic Party to a 14-1 victory, after almost 25 years in opposition.
He said that the ULP government spent a lot in the lead-up to the polls, adding that the party was “trying, essentially, to buy the election.
“And so that exacerbated the problem. But prior to that, we’ve been complaining about the fact that the debt had been increasing and the ability to manage it was declining,” he said.
Friday said that when the NDP came to office, the overdraft, which Parliament capped at EC$100 million, was close to EC$200 million.
Asked if he thinks that “person on the ground really, really understand” the realities in the country, the prime minister said that the ULP had done “a very good job at propaganda.
“That’s one thing the previous administration — good at making, as you say, big pronouncements. They can do all kinds of things. They are on top of the mountain. The only thing is around the mountain is just ashes. That’s the mountain they’ve climbed.”
The prime minister was told that people would say that while the ULP is good at propaganda, his government is poor at PR.
“Well, we will get better at it, because there’s a story that you say — and this is possibly part of my personality — where you say, your actions speak far louder than your words. And so my thing is that if people make that recognition for themselves, and people are telling us now, they can already see some differences. Some of the roads that have been patched, being repaired, and so forth, in areas that had never been touched,” the prime minister said.
But Luke Boyea, one of the hosts of the show, told Friday that his party mastered communication during the election campaign.
“… I think we are actually doing quite a good job of communicating what we’re doing. … There are two components to it. One is saying what you’re doing. The other is countering what they’re saying,” the prime minister said.
“I think that is what people are feeling, that maybe we should be countering what they’re saying. In my view, the focus that we’ve had in the past four months in government is seeking to deal with the urgent situation that we have.”
Friday said his government has done public relations to let the public know what it has been doing.
“The others, if they have been spinning the thing in a way that is not consistent with reality, you hope that people will see that, but I agree we will do a better job at countering it as well, because we have to demonstrate to people first of all, what the challenge is that we have inherited, how we are going to deal with it going forward, and to give them the hope that we know how to manage it,” the prime minister said.
“And that is something that I think that a lot of people have been telling me that they like the fact that we are addressing the needs for people, that we are communicating to people, not just to one person. That’s the other thing that’s different. I am not the only piece for the government.
“You have ministers who are speaking, and they are telling the ministries and their constituents what they are doing for them, and that is something that we will continue to do.
“Because, while I am prime minister, we also said in the campaign that we have ministers who can hit the ground running as soon as they get into government, they can do the things that they need to do. And they have to be allowed to do that.”
However, Luke Boyea, one of the hosts of the show, disagreed with the prime minister, saying, “I don’t think you fully control the narrative, and some of it is, as you said, your style, you’re kind of laid back. … let the action speak, rather than how the former guy used to do it and brag about everything, right?
“But sometimes we need to know. Remember, your perspective on the economy and on society is very different to ours. We’re just there. We just living it, whereas you’re seeing the bigger picture. And sometimes I think you need to communicate and lay out the steps for us,’ Boyea said.
“I’ll take that on board. I think you’re absolutely right, because we have to, we have to take the people along with us, because what we are doing is we’re say, ‘Listen, we are fulfilling our mandate, and we’re delivering, and the people will feel it, but we also, I agree, we could always do better at communicating to people … where we are, and how we are getting through it, and where we intend to go …”
