New year blessing message
New year blessing message for 2008 ****Begin*****
In a matter of months, not years, the character of governance has been changed dramatically and permanently in this country.
This is how the first page of the UPP Manifesto reads:
A UPP Government will take Integrity Legislation to the first working session of Parliament.
This Legislation will provide for Whistle Blower Protection.
To refocus on the Sunshine Government's central campaign issue, it would be useful to revisit "Agenda for Change", the UPP Election Manifesto that the electorate so resoundingly endorsed.
Others are revisiting the Manifesto quite selectively.
Let us look at the first page of Agenda for Change.
Integrity will be the bedrock of the UPP.
Transparency and Accountability will be our watchwords.
The Government will be the servants of the people, that is our commitment.
The people's purpose always will come first.
Ours will be a fully participatory democracy in which the people's voice will be heard.
This regime of morality legislation will long serve its principal purpose of protecting the Antiguan and Barbudan people from any resurrection of the predatory practices of our former rulers.
The Sunshine Government has been applauded internationally for this definitive departure from the practices of the past and for our dramatic delivery of such landmark legislation, of such potency, in such concentration, and in so short a space of time.
In another definitive break with the past, we have chosen legislative sanction to formally empower the National Economic and Social Council, the NESC.
New year blessing message for 2008******part2
We will respect the law.We will defend and strengthen our institutions of democracy.
These values will be constants when we have Government in the Sunshine."
Integrity and prevention of corruption legislation, together with freedom of information legislation, is already in place.
This has profoundly changed the rules of government in Antigua and Barbuda.
The NESC guarantees and mandates the national community's ongoing participation in and influence over the shaping of government's social and fiscal perspectives.
This is a quantum leap in the transition to a truly participatory democracy in Antigua and Barbuda.
The NESC's role is not intended to be project specific.
Other mechanisms will support specific investment and development projects.
The Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority is one such mechanism.
The Investment Authority will operate a transparent investment policy that will curtail individual political subjectivity in the approvals process for major investment proposals.
The Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority will be a regulatory, promotional and facilitative agency, a one stop shop, that will coordinate the inputs and impacts of the various ministries and agencies of government on investment projects.
Whatever permutation is used, transparency, accountability and integrity are bedrock fundamentals of the new political and government culture that has come with Government in the Sunshine.
The NESC is not intended to constrain the authority and the obligations of the Cabinet to formulate and order policy in its conduct of the nation's business.
The NESC is not envisaged as a parallel Cabinet.
Nor is the NESC conceived as a substitute for Parliament.
The NESC's essential function is to provide counsel to the Government on overall economic and social policies and to build national consensus on major economic and social perspectives.
The Presentation of the 2008 Budget ahead of its relevant fiscal period underlines another dramatic break with the past.
Previously, splurge and spend without a Budget and without fiscal constraint was the norm for an administration whose conduct was the epitome of anarchy in government.
New year blessing message for 2008********part3*******
Among those investments prospects are approved proposals for high-end resort projects centred around Seaforth and Pelican Island.
Another is the Alliance for Development through Education and Empowerment that the government has struck with the Allen Stanford group.
The confirmation of this Alliance has been the subject of much speculation; with many persons playing to the media and playing the media, largely on emotive issues, and largely on emotional bases.
The debate in the media generated much heat and little light.
The 2008 Budget Presentation repeatedly emphasises the Government's resolve for fiscal discipline and accountability.
This is demonstrated in the declaration that the statutory sanction of Surcharge may henceforth be invoked against public officials responsible for loss of public funds.
Public officials, in this case, include elected officials; and everyone else receiving a stipend from the public purse.
All of this is quite relevant as we look forward to significant new private investment in the New Year and a relatively substantial public sector investment programme for 2008.
The emphasis has appeared to be on agitation rather than on enlightenment on the critical social and economic issues relevant to the Alliance for Development through Education and Empowerment.
In the Keynote to Agenda for Change, I dealt squarely with the state of our nation and with the options available to us.
The Stanford development of the lands ceded to Asian Village Antigua Limited promises a large number of such jobs.
The economic impact of this development has received scant attention in the public discourse that followed the 2008 Budget Presentation.
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