Enslaved Behind the Bars of Need

My Nature Island Brothers and Sisters:

Dominica is being transformed in the image and likeness of those who don't share our values and don't believe in the ethos of our society - our values and norms.

The sale of our passports, the very element within our national revenue stream intended to improve our quality of life, is being used to cripple the character of our nation and cast the darkest clouds over our Nature Island space.

Dominica is in danger. After decades of independence we are now on the verge of re colonization ... our forefathers earned the right for this country to be governed by its sons and daughters. And today, those who govern are selling our national identify by allowing their foreign friends under the guise of Citizenship by Investment to illegally collect and corruptly spend billions of dollars belonging to our people for their personal gain.

In this day and age impoverished citizens yearning for a better life are being enslaved by ruling party puppets of their passport selling masters behind the bars of need for food, clothing, and shelter assistance provided by state, while foreigners are allowed to plunder hundreds of millions from the public purse with impunity.

With our own passport money, foreign friends of the regime are deciding who will contest elections for a political party that has failed the people miserably in government for 20 years; how many hundreds of millions will be spent to buy elections and defeat the will of the people. The slave masters in the making are deciding, all by themselves, how much of our passport money will come into Dominica and how much they will keep overseas; which foreign contractors will, without competitive bid or public tender, receive hundreds of millions of dollars from our passport sales to build public facilities and build out the economic infrastructure. The slave masters in the making, insisting that Dominican lives do not matter, ensure that local contractors, service providers and born Dominicans in general suffer, deliberately deprived of opportunities funded by the sale of their passports to earn a living from using their talents and skills in the development of their own country.

Two executives involved in the construction of a hotel resort in the north have smiled all the way to their foreign bank accounts with 60 million US dollars, 163 million EC dollars, (81.5 million dollars each) from commissions on the passport sales that financed the hotel and their share of the difference between passport sales and the cost of construction.

In the signature disgrace of our life and times under the watch of the Labour Party administration, billions of dollars belonging to the people of Dominica are being illegally privatized and diverted to foreign controllers of Dominica's passport business.

This is not an economy for the people of Dominica; it is being built as a modern-day slave plantation organized by ruling party puppets of their foreign masters for their exclusive wealth creation benefit

• The economy is not working for the people

• People's money to finance the growth of the people's economic engines are under the absolute control of foreigners

• The struggle to survive in Dominica is getting harder and harder

• There are too many Dominicans trapped in poverty & dependency

• No attempts to reverse the chronic youth unemployment crisis

• Nothing is happening to deal with low wages, rising cost of living

Because the strategic plan of those with collective responsibility for the affairs of Dominica is to keep the people of Dominica poor, dependent and enslaved to massa's will

The independence to run our own affairs that we gleefully embraced on November 3rd, 1978, is working wonders for the multi-billion-dollar benefit of the foreign friends of the ruling party regime. It is not working for the farmers, the fishermen, the nurses, the teachers, the police officers, the public officers, the doctors, the lawyers, the business men and women, the shop keepers, the disappearing middle class, the clerks, the carpenters, the masons, the electricians, the plumbers, the rich, the poor, the unemployed, the youth, the elderly, the leaders of church…

The nature island people of Dominica from all walks of life, know and understand that in the last 20 years we have been reversing into the dark ages where our ancestors fought against the odds for our freedom… for a Dominica for Dominicans… for lives that matter.

As we reflect carefully on the necessity of ensuring that our lives in Dominica matter, the United Workers Party calls on all Dominicans to join hearts and minds to stand for what is right and just to save our country. It's a collective national responsibility that commits us to:

1. Bring an immediate end to the anti-Dominica national policy that places foreign interests above Dominican interests. Stop the relegation of Dominicans to second class citizens in Dominica increasingly unable to own land, residential/commercial property and industry while foreigners selling Dominican passports are buying up Dominica's prime real estate

2. Restore meaning and purpose to all institutions of State, including the Judiciary, Local Government, the Civil Service, the Dominica Police Force, Statutory Corporations, the Integrity Commission and the Electoral Commission

3. Build a new economic framework, driven by the private, public, cooperative and civil society sectors for the development of the growth engines – Agriculture, Water, Tourism, Renewable Energy, Manufacturing, Construction, Information Communication Technology, Culture

Far from addressing these fundamental requirements of change, the ruling party is leading Dominicans back into enslavement much as if their lives don't matter and their freedom, happiness, progress and prosperity will be at the fancy and whim of some foreign master, forever and ever.

Against this vicious threat, we stand resolute in the conviction that freedom, truth, righteousness, justice and human dignity will be forever protected in our Nature Island to the world.