Saving our Nation

The Dominica Freedom Party envisions citizens and residents thriving and living harmoniously with dignity in their land of beauty and splendour – Nature Island of the World. We all want a better quality life for ourselves but we also want our children and their children to enjoy a better quality life than we enjoy now. That is the heart of every good parent. But as social beings, we collectively manage our affairs and interaction with each other with the aim of improving the quality of our life. A strong nation is built by carefully balancing the pursuit of economic, social and environmental policies and strategies that will lead to a better quality life for all citizens and future generations. But the degree of success of such pursuits is influenced by dominant attitudes and values that exist in the society.

Harmful attitudes and values always exist alongside positive ones, but when harmful attitudes and values become predominant or sufficiently significant, they can lead to the destruction of societies. Shifts in values and attitudes can occur over time and can be spurred by influential persons or groups in one direction or another. The Dominica Freedom Party understands this and is concerned over the changing attitudes and values in our land and we ask for your support as we seek to get the nod to govern our country and with that opportunity, steer our country away from negative attitudes and values that are clearly destroying our society.

Mahatma Gandhi spoke of seven things that will destroy humanity. Indeed, many of these are currently destroying our nation and we desperately need to turn the tide around. These seven things are (1) Politics without principles; (2) pleasure without conscience; (3) wealth without work; (4) knowledge without character; (5) business without morality; (6) science without humanity; and (7) worship without faith.

Let us take a closer look to see how these things are indeed wrecking our beautiful Dominica.

Politics without Principles

This one certainly aptly applies to Dominica and it has largely been ushered in or its prevalence has been greatly increased by the Skerrit-led political administration. The regime deceives the people just to maintain political power. They often don't follow the rule of law in order to pursue their political and self-interest. They sew discord and hate among the people as a major plank of their political strategy. They victimize people and use the police force to bully and intermediate in order to stifle opposition. They use their political position to steal or misappropriate the people's money and use those very funds to entrench their evil reign. Anything goes with these guys.

They don't seem to have a moral conscience. Money and power are all that matters to them. They pretend to care about the people but this is just their cover to wield political power in their own self-interest. They appear to have no real compassion and could resort to serious crimes when that suits their self-interest. They undermine all organs of government including the good governance institutions. Certainly, they have engaged in elections fraud to maintain political power given that they expected that the majority of the people on the island would have voted against them. They certainly seek to undermine and frustrate the justice system in other to prevent the success of election petitions. When a ruling political regime lacks good principles to the extent that we currently see in Dominica, there are a few inevitable results.

The country gets poorer while the political leaders get richer. The masses of the people who support the regime will also become worst off; they may be bribed, but the bribes are always never sufficient to transform their lives to a state where they are truly thriving. Moreover, the people will lose their freedom and this will distracts from the enjoyment of their country. These results may persist and intensify over time especially where free and fair elections are prevented. But if free and fair elections are not carried out, the point would ultimately be reached when the people will say enough is enough and this may break the tenuous peace and tranquility that now exist. But many would at that point reckon that they would rather the country be stalled in order for it to be fixed, than for the people to remain in poverty and bondage.

But there is hope and the Dominica Freedom Party desires your support to save our country. As we noted in the last article, those of us who are patriotic and want to save our country, we have to be smarter than the evil regime. We have to be more organized than they are. Our just fight must be superior to their determination to remain in power at any cost; we must sell the truth better than they sell their lies.

The struggle must be on several fronts – legal, economic, enlightenment of the people, showing up at the polls when that time comes, among other morally right strategies; and the pursuit of all of these prayerfully.

Kent Vital Political Leader Dominica Freedom Party.