20.NOV.09

EDITOR: The yes vote campaign that is currently being “put on” to try to garner 66.7 per cent of the votes on November 25 is far from impressive! In addition to showing our dissatisfaction with the bill, many Vincentians are going to show that the campaign was ineffective and wasteful. We are going to show our displeasure by voting a resounding “No”.{{more}}

The current attempt of the Government to gain our support is, in my view, pretentious and hypocritical. It is also an upside-down approach. The leaders can only blame themselves when they fail because they are doing a thoughtless, irrational and artificial work and have the audacity to call it education.

Imagine, we were asked to make our contribution in consultations, you have disregarded our good views and put your own thing, and then after years you return to us and give us just a few months to peruse a thick difficult document. We realise that our wishes are not reflected in it. We raise our genuine concerns, just to be met with insults. Then you take millions of our dollars and tell us to vote yes?

The first thing you should have done was to educate us properly, listen and heed our recommendations and surely we are reasonable people and would have accepted the Bill for the good of our country. But no, you decide to take a back-to-front, nonsensical approach. So we are saying that you must “come again”. Do a thorough work. Let the mistakes be corrected. Vincentians are more aware than we were one year ago, so we will be able to make a more meaningful contribution to produce an admirable and better document that will contain provisions that strengthen fundamental rights and freedoms and our democracy.

Moreover, you as politicians must determine to be more mature. Consider the experience of a student who refused to listen to his parents, teachers, guardians and friends when they warned him about his lackadaisical behaviour . It is now close to the end of the school term and he is trying to gain marks to be promoted, but it is too late and he has to repeat. Subsequently, the student can decide to get serious and start working early and wisely in order to reap success or he can choose to behave like an unruly spoiled child, which will lead to his eventual expulsion from the system.

What will you choose to do? We, the people, reject your wrong-side-out, back-to-front approach. Grow up, wise up and recognise your great responsibility as government ministers elected by some of the people to serve all of the people.

Ann-Marie John
svgpatriot@hotmail.com