St. Kitts and Nevis' Governor General His Excellency Dr. Sir Cuthbert Sebastian delivers the Speech from the Throne

Throne Speech Delivered by His Excellency the Governor General Sir Cuthbert Sebastian GCMG OBE MD CM on the Opening of the National Assembly, March 10, 2010.

Introduction

I am delighted to provide to you an overview of my Government’s strategy for change and development over the next five years. This strategy will dramatically advance the implementation of the impressive agenda for change that my Government initiated in 1995. The projects and programmes that emanate from this strategy would ensure that in the upcoming 5-year planning horizon, our economy would substantially improve on the remarkable record of growth and development that was achieved over the past 15 years.

My Government intends that over the next five years, the fruits of economic expansion that has transformed so many lives over the past 15 years would be spread even more widely, and would reach even more people. In particular, we intend that more of our young people will be pulled into the mainstream of development, and would get their fair share of the national economic pie.

We will pursue gender equity with a view to ensuring that our policies take full cognizance of gender issues and give our people of both genders, equal opportunity to scale the ladder of social and economic progress by seizing the opportunities for education, employment, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation that abounds in our growing economy. We will also confront poverty even more vigorously by continuing to hold out a caring and helping hand to the poor and underprivileged, with a view to bringing every one of them above poverty line.

Of course, that poverty line must be defined by us, Kittitians and Nevisians, and not necessarily based on international norms, which classify every person who is barely able to subsist as being above the poverty line. For us, the aim is to ensure that all of our citizens enjoy a decent and meaningful existence, and are afforded the amenities of life required to realistically pursue their individual goals, contribute significantly to our national goals, and realize their fullest potential as human beings created in the image of the Almighty.

15 Years of Progress

Economic Transformation

Some five years ago when it became apparent that the sugar industry would collapse under the weight of globalization and trade liberalization, which had diluted the protection that our sugar enjoyed in European markets and had dramatically reduced the price of our sugar in these markets, many were fearful that our economy would disintegrate and that the goals and aspirations of our people would become unattainable. But while the Government was exerting every effort to protect the industry during its first 10 years in office, it was also diligently implementing a bold and progressive strategic plan to diversify our economy and reduce our reliance on sugar.

In particular, my Government resurrected the tourist industry, by boosting the marketing effort through the implementation of a comprehensive marketing plan; by facilitating product development through the creation of more onshore activities such as our world-famous Scenic Railway tour; by redesigning and invigorating Port Zante that had become a ghost town and a threat to our environment; by promoting investment in the expansion of existing hotels and construction of new hotels such as the impressive Marriott Hotel; by attracting international airlines such American Airlines, Delta Airlines, USAirways, and British Airways to our shores through our heavy investment in airlift; and by targeting new sectors of the tourism marketplace including the sports tourism sector. We can therefore look confidently to the arrival of over a half million visitors to our shores in the 2009/2010 season.

My Government is committed to the view that agriculture must be an important part of any economy that we create here in St. Kitts and Nevis. We must have the capacity to feed ourselves and to retain a greater portion of the expenditure of our many tourists by selling them food produced in St. Kitts and Nevis. Hence, agricultural diversification has been a critical component of our overall economic diversification strategy. We are therefore quite pleased that immediately after the closure of the sugar industry our farmers have taken full advantage of the additional lands we have provided, and of our generous packages of assistance and tax concessions, to double agricultural output in less than 5 years.

We have also supported and strengthened our manufacturing sector through our investment in the education of our people, our generous fiscal incentives, and our network of trade treaties that have opened up international markets for our manufacturing enterprises. Indeed, the US trade statistics now show that St. Kitts and Nevis exports more manufactured goods to the United States than any other Eastern Caribbean Country, including Barbados.

In addition, we have boosted the offshore university services sector through our modern accreditation legislation, our attractive fiscal incentives to universities establishing operations here and the provision of tax concessions to our people who invest in student accommodation. As a consequence of this, we now have thousands of foreign students pursuing higher education here in St. Kitts and Nevis, and contributing in a very significant way to the economic life of our nation.

The significant growth of the real sectors of our economy has been facilitated by our heavy investment in infrastructure that not only provides convenience to our people but also facilitates production, trade, commerce and the provision of services. Our road network, to which we have recently added the impressive Frederick T. Williams Highway, is among the finest in the region. Our information and telecommunications infrastructure, which benefitted significantly from our liberalization of the telecommunications industry, is now state-of-the art, and the vast majority of our people have access to broadband and internet facilities. We are making steady progress with the upgrading of our electrical supply and even now, we are expecting a new generator to arrive in our Federation within a few weeks and to be installed expeditiously. In a nutshell, our programme of infrastructure development has been conducive to economic growth and transformation.

Social Change

The performance of the key economic sectors, which were nurtured and developed by my Government, has helped us to successfully confront the mammoth challenges associated with the demise of the 400-year old sugar industry and to transition smoothly out of sugar production. Moreover, the resources generated by these important economic sectors have permitted the Government to bring about meaningful change in the social sector and to dramatically advance the welfare and capabilities of our people.

In particular, my Government have definitively removed the label of landlessness from our people, by providing our lower income families some 3,891 houses and by making available to our people some 5,000 lots of land under the Special Land Initiative. The distribution of land to our people on such a massive scale is yet another great stride along the road of freedom and empowerment.

Our history books reveal that because of the fertility of our soil, the island of St. Kitts was never allowed to develop a vibrant peasantry since most of the land was devoted to sugar cane and was therefore not available for the emancipated slaves. Moreover, during much of the colonial era only the landed class was permitted to vote in General Elections. In other words, if you were not a landowner, you could not vote. It was through the agitation of our forbears under the leadership of our National Hero, the Right Excellent Sir Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw that this inequity was addressed by the introduction of adult suffrage in 1952, and our people were permitted to vote in General Elections and to play a role in administering the affairs of their island.

But the vision of our national hero extended far beyond the right to vote. His aim was the social and economic empowerment of our people. Hence, in 1975, the Government under the leadership of the Right Excellent Sir Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw acquired the sugar estates lands on the behalf of the people – the same lands on which our forefathers had toiled tirelessly and pennilessly for centuries, the same land that stood between our people and right to play a role in administering their own affairs. Today, our Prime Minister, the Honourable Dr. Denzil Llewellyn Douglas is completing the job. He is now giving the land to the people. He has given every citizen of this country, of every political persuasion, the opportunity to own a piece of this rock.

Almost overnight, the percentage of landowners in St. Kitts and Nevis relative to the population would be among the highest in the world. This is indeed a major milestone in the long march of our people to freedom and empowerment.

However, the Special Land Initiative is not just about history and emotion; it is an economic necessity. The lands were provided to our people essentially free of cost because the price paid is basically a development charge, which we expect will partially cover the infrastructural cost of development. However, the economic benefits that we expect to reap from the Special Land Initiative go way beyond the price paid for the land. In particular, we believe that the wide distribution of lands will fuel construction for many years to come and contribute immeasurably to the rate of economic growth, which throughout the world, has been dampened by the global financial crisis.

In addition, my Government is of the view that property ownership will provide our people the collateral they need to approach the banks and other financial institutions for the loans they require to finance the pursuit of the various goals, including higher education and the establishment of businesses. In other words, land ownership will become a major source of empowerment in St. Kitts and Nevis, and will give our people the opportunity to go about their business with confidence and self-esteem, and to embrace each other as brothers and sisters, equal not only in the sight of God but also in the view of society as a whole and of each other.

It is particularly pleasing that many of our young people, in particular, have taken full advantage of the Special Land Initiative and have become landowners. Indeed, my Government has ensured that our young people enjoy their fair share of the fruits of our outstanding economic progress. Over the past 14 years, the Development Bank has disbursed some $75 million as student loans to persons wishing to pursue higher education. This amount far exceeds the $1 million disbursed as student loans in the previous fifteen years. Moreover, many of our young people have benefitted from a wide range of scholarships to pursue professional and academic training overseas.

That is why so many of our professionals, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, and economists, are our own young people. That is why when we look at the hillsides in St. Kitts and Nevis and see the majestic villas and residences, we can be proud that many of them belong to our own people who have worked hard and have taken advantage of the opportunities provided by my Government, to lift themselves out of poverty and squalor to reach for the highest heights.

We have also reoriented the education system so that it brings greater value to young people and to the society. In particular, even as we strengthen the capabilities of our schools, we have also enhanced the ability of the education system to provide our students usable skills of practical value to the society and to the students seeking to become entrepreneurs or to enter the work force.

The Advanced Vocational Education Centre (AVEC), the Hospitality Centre at the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College, the National Skill Training Programme (NSTP), Project Strong, and the YES programme have touched the lives of thousands of our young people and have given them confidence and the skills they require to play a meaningful role in the economic life of our nation. The recently constructed, state-of-the art Saddlers Secondary School will play an important role in blending the academic curriculum with technical and vocational programmes of practical value, and facilitating intergenerational interaction in an After-School Programme intended to build character and communicate appropriate values to our young people.

The focus of our education system is on the development of the whole person, not just the academic capabilities of our young people. Of course, we understand that from time to time, our young people would encounter problems and stress. We are therefore boosting the guidance counselling function at our schools and we have trained our teachers to identify children with emotional difficulties with a view to initiating remedial action as soon as possible. In addition, while we take pride in our students who attain exceptional numbers of subject passes, we are encouraging our schools to pay more attention to completion rates and to ensure that more of our children reach at least the minimum acceptable level of performance.

We are also implementing, with the assistance of the Caribbean Development Bank, a comprehensive Youth at Risk Programme, aimed at identifying children at risk of getting into trouble and taking pre-emptive action to resolve their problems. However, notwithstanding our best efforts, some children will get into trouble. Hence, we will shortly be opening a brand new state-of-the-art residential facility at Harris’s Village to accommodate, train and rehabilitate children who get into trouble.

My Government believes that participation in sports and games is a critical component of the development of young people. It not only promotes health and fitness but it builds character, encourages group activity, and provides wholesome and legitimate avenues for our young people to give vent to immense talents and energies. The need for our young people to engage in group activities is particularly crucial in this electronic age when so much of the various forms of entertainment are so personal, individualistic, solitary, and at times, anti-social. Try communicating with your teenage son when he is engrossed in his iPod or video game, and you would appreciate immediately the anti-social nature of many of the modern electronic gadgets.

My Government has therefore provided a wide range of opportunities for our young people to participate in Sports. We have established the Under-13 Cricket Festival, the Under-16 Netball Competition, and we facilitate Summer Camps that give our young people the opportunity to participate in a range of athletic activities. We have also dramatically improved and expanded our sporting facilities by building Football, Cricket and Netball Stadiums at Warner Park, the Conaree Stadium, the St. Pauls Stadium, the Cayon Stadium, and Silver Jubilee Athletics Stadium. These facilities not only provide convenience to our young people but they attract international matches and competitions to our Federation, and play important roles in promoting sports tourism.

The cornerstone of my Government’s development strategy over the past 15 years has been the empowerment of all of our people – young and old, male and female. In particular, we have devoted considerable resources to the protection of the poor. Over the past fifteen years, we doubled the minimum wage, increased the assistance pension payable to indigents by 130%, subsidized electricity charge by capping the fuel surcharge and eventually removing it altogether, removed import duties on certain basic goods, imposed limits of profits margins chargeable on these basic goods, and beefed up the administration and enforcement of the price control regulations. Indeed, the speedy action of my Government to protect the poor after global food prices increased dramatically a few years ago has drawn commendations regionally.

We also modernized our health system through the rehabilitation of the JNF General Hospital with expanded state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment facilities and the construction of the Pogson Hospital with the capacity to play an important role in community medicine and in the fight against HIV/AIDS. These modern facilities and our entire health system have been made easily and freely accessible to the poor, to our children, to the elderly, and to persons suffering from chronic ailments.

It is clear therefore that over 15-years we have overcome numerous challenges and have dramatically transformed our economy from a sugar monoculture to a vibrant and diversified service-oriented economy. Moreover, this economic transformation has been accompanied by radical social change and social development that have ensured that the benefits of the economic transformation have flowed throughout the country and have reached all of our citizens in varying degrees. The challenge for the next five years is to secure the progress that we have already achieved, boost the rate of economic growth while keeping intact our fragile ecosystems, accelerate the pace of economic transformation, and continue to empower our people through meaningful social change.

The Way Forward

Public Debt and Fiscal Management

One of the major threats to our continued progress as a nation is the relatively high debt to GDP ratio that has plagued our nation since the passage of a series of hurricanes in the latter part of the 1990’s and the early part of this century. My Government is pleased, however, that we have been making steady progress in reducing the debt to GDP ratio, which at the end of 2008 was 165.38% after reaching over 190% in the first half of this decade.

We expect that this ratio would have increased somewhat in 2009 as a result of the dampening effect of the global crisis on the level of GDP, but as our economy picks up and we continue to improve revenue management and tighten the controls on expenditure, the debt to GDP ratio will continue to trend downwards as we diligently work to reach target for public debt of 60% of GDP by 2020 as agreed by the member states of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union.

We have also experienced a steady improvement in our fiscal balances over the years. In particular, the primary balance moved from a deficit of $107.6 million to surpluses of $48.2 million in 2005, $84.0 million in 2006, $86.7 million in 2007, $128.2 million in 2008 and estimated surplus of 128.3 million in 2009. In other words, the road from the fiscal deficits of the hurricane years to the surpluses of recent years was not an overnight journey. We made steady and substantial improvements each year until in 2005 the primary balance went into a surplus, which has continued to increase each year since then.

In the upcoming years, we must accelerate the pace at which we bring down the debt. As we have witnessed recently, the global financial system continuously throws up new challenges, and our ability to deal effectively with such challenges is significantly constrained by the debt burden. Hence, over the next five years, my Government will strengthen its revenue collection systems even further, intensify its efforts to collect arrears of revenue, reduce public expenditure, and commercialize or privatize a number of public sector enterprises with a view to reducing the size of Government and allowing central Government to focus on its core activities.

My Government will also rationalize our tax system by abolishing a wide range of indirect taxes and replacing them with a comprehensive value added tax. Work has already commenced in respect to the implementation of the value added tax and the Ministry of Finance will spearhead, over the next few months, a major public consultation and education exercise to clear the way for the introduction of the value added tax by November of this year.

The Real Sectors

My Government expects that the tourism sector will be a major contributor to growth over the next five years. Already, there is an impressive array of projects at various stages of implementation that will boost economic activity and open up new entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for our people. We will therefore move expeditiously to advance the La Vallee Greens Project and the Kittitian Height Projects. These projects are critical to my Government because they are situated in the midst of rural communities that were significantly affected by the demise of the sugar industry.

We also look forward to the completion of the Ocean Edge Resort, the Silver Reef condominiums, the Sunrise Rise Villas, the Marriott Vacation Club, and the continued and accelerated implementation of the Christophe Harbour Project Development, and the Park Hyatt Project which we expect will result in the construction of at least three five-star hotels on the Southeast Peninsula during our next term in office. My Government also views cruise ship tourism as an important component of the tourism sector. We therefore plan to boost cruise ship passenger arrivals to over 1 Million through construction of a new pier at Port Zante and the revitalization and renewal of the town of Basseterre.

We also expect that a number of land development projects by local entrepreneurs and institutions will help boost the rate of economic growth in the upcoming years. These include projects at Ogee’s, Olivees, Dewar’s, and Bourke’s. These projects along with the other hotel and tourism-related projects will ensure that the construction sector continues to make a very significant contribution to economic growth over the medium term.

We expect that the implementation of these varied projects will dramatically advance the process of transforming our economy from the pre-2005 sugar-based economy to a new and vibrant service-oriented economy. This new economy will also offer other services including banking and finance, information and communication technologies, and offshore university services. It is our aim that the vibrant services sector will help to generate demand for the output of the supporting sectors such as agriculture and handicraft.

We view agriculture, in particular, as critical to food security and our development generally. We intend therefore to implement a plan that would dramatically enhance our capacity to feed our many visitors and ourselves over the next five years. During that period, we intend to facilitate the establishment of at least two large scale commercial farms to fuel the expansion of agricultural output. We also expect that the manufacturing sector will continue to grow but will focus on high valued added goods requiring the advanced skills and knowledge of our people and generating the resources necessary to provide them with decent and competitive wages.

The Social Sector

My Government believes that land ownership is an important tool for the empowerment of our people and for lifting our poor people above the poverty line. That is why the land was distributed in a manner that ensures that even the very poor among us now have the opportunity to own land. We believe that land ownership will open up new options for them in relation to the pursuit of the various goals. However, for our people to use the land as collateral or security to raise loans for any purpose, they must have title. Hence, my Government has decided that all persons who make the initial deposit of $100 in respect of land allocated to them, under the Special Land Initiative, will be entitled to get their deeds immediately and have their titles duly registered at the Court Registry.

However, we also want to be sure that persons interested in building homes on the lands are provided the opportunity to do so within a reasonable timeframe. We therefore intend to proceed with the provision of infrastructure to the lands as expeditiously as possible. We will also provide financing through the Development Bank for those interested in constructing a home on the lands acquired through the Special Land Initiative. This will be complemented by a Special Guarantee Scheme to provide additional security to those persons requiring such additional security to obtain loans for the construction of homes.

The Special Guarantee will also be accessible to persons who approach the Development Bank or other Banks for loans to pursue academic or professional studies and who do not have the required number of sureties to secure student loans. We are determined that no young person who would wish to pursue academic or professional studies would be denied the opportunity to do so purely on the basis of the income bracket of his or her family or the inability of the family to provide the security required by the banks for such loan.

We believe, however, that, ultimately, the most effective way of making university education accessible to all of our citizens is through the establishment of full-fledged University here in St. Kitts and Nevis that would offer a wide range of professional and academic courses to local, regional and international students. The medical schools and the veterinary school that are established here in our Federation have demonstrated that top class tertiary institutions can operate from St. Kitts and Nevis in a viable and profitable manner.

We therefore intend to upgrade the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College into a full-fledged University that would offer a range of courses designed to meet the needs of our students as well as the special needs of students from overseas wishing to pursue professional studies here in St. Kitts and Nevis with a view to completing their residency and licensing requirement in the United States of America or elsewhere. In this regard, we are prepared to partner with other institutions and entities that have the capacity, expertise, and capital to assist us in this endeavour.

My Government fully appreciates that not every person would be able attend university full time, and we would wish to support those persons who pursue distance education programmes. In this regard, we intend to upgrade the facilities at the public library to ensure its services are relevant in the context of the currently technological age, and widely available to our citizens, including those interested in general reading and those who wish conduct research as part of their university course – whether by distance or face-to-face.

We also want to ensure that our students leaving the secondary schools are adequately equipped to use the technologies that are currently in use in the workplace and at the institutions of higher learning. In particular, we want to ensure that all children leaving our secondary school system are able to use the personal computer competently and proficiently. Hence, we propose to move ahead expeditiously with our plan to provide every secondary school student with a laptop computer and to ensure that the curriculum of our Secondary Schools are appropriately tailored so that the students obtain maximum benefits from the use of such computers. We will also make the appropriate arrangements with the providers of internet service in St. Kitts and Nevis to equip all secondary schools with wireless internet access capable of accommodating all students and teachers.

We believe that in today’s modern world a child without access to a computer and the internet is at a great disadvantage relative to other students who are able to afford computers. This initiative will therefore remove another stumbling block faced by the children of poor families striving to get an up-to-date education with a view to lifting themselves and their family out of poverty. My Government also believes that the widespread use of computers by our children will keep them occupied and give them an alternative to dysfunctional gang-related activities.

It would also serve to make the use of information technology an important component of our culture, which would overtime give birth to a range of computer technology and internet-based enterprises that would offer internationally competitive services and fuel the development of our Information and Communications Technology sector. We are persuaded that, overtime, our economy would reap from this initiative great benefits that would far outweigh its cost.

We believe that it is our responsibility to provide exciting and rewarding opportunities to occupy the attention of our young people that would make the greatest impact in the fight against youth crime in particular. Of course, we have implemented a number other anti-crime initiatives and we expect that these initiatives will yield significant results in the short to medium term.

In particular, we have, among other things, stepped up our patrols, we have introduced a gun control unit and an anti-gang unit, we have strengthened our laws that penalize violent crimes, we have introduced close-circuit TV as both a deterrent and the means of crime detection, we have established K-9 (or Dog)Units in both Police and Defence Force; we have improved the police facilities through the renovation of the Basseterre Police Station and the upgrading of the Frigate Bay Police Station; We have started the construction of a new Police Station at Dieppe Bay; we have exposed our law officers to advanced training in the use of the latest law enforcement methods and technologies, and we have procured technical assistance from law enforcement agencies in advanced countries to assist the police in the implementation of a crime fighting plan.

We will carry out a comprehensive review of the various crime fighting initiatives with a view to evaluating their effectiveness, committing more resources to the initiatives that are achieving results and developing new community-based approaches to the fight against crime. Moreover, we intend to implement an EU-funded project to comprehensively improve and upgrade the accommodation and facilities of the Police and Defence Force. As part of this project, we are now pursuing a proposal to build a new Fire Station and a new Police Training Academy in Lime Kiln, and to construct residential units for our police at the current site of the Fire Station and the Police Training Centre.

The aim of my Government is to change lives for the better by empowering people and creating a vast array of opportunities that our people may seize, depending on their interests and aptitudes, as the means of advancing the quality of their lives and creating wealth for themselves and their family. Of course, people may suffer setbacks at times but it is our aim that in such periods of difficulties the Government must have the capacity to lend a helping hand.

We are therefore pleased that the actuaries have carried out their evaluations in respect to the proposed short-term unemployment insurance scheme, and the plans to introduce this important scheme are well advanced. We believe that this scheme would be a critical source of income to our people during short periods of unemployment.

Similarly, we want to ensure that our people do not find themselves virtually bankrupt because of the health bills they are faced when they become ill. We want all citizens, rich and poor, to have access to the finest health and medical care, even when such care is not available in our Federation. Of course, we are progressively and continuously upgrading our already state-of-the art medical facilities at the JNF General Hospital and Pogson Hospital, and we intend to continue doing so with the addition of more advanced treatment capabilities such haemodialysis, and modern diagnostic tools including MRI facilities.

However, as a small nation with a small population, there are many medical facilities and procedures that could not be made available in St. Kitts and Nevis in an economically viable manner. We therefore intend to introduce a National Health Insurance Scheme that would be available to all citizens and would cover the cost of local medical care and of overseas medical care when it is established definitively, by a local panel of doctors, that the treatment is not available in St. Kitts and Nevis. We believe that Health Insurance Scheme would bring relief for our poor people, in particular, who are not always able to afford the medical bills they must pay during periods of illness. This is therefore an important part of our very successful poverty reduction strategy that, according to the CDB Poverty Assessment Survey, has helped to reduce poverty in St. Kitts and Nevis by some 20% since 2000 and virtually eliminate extreme poverty by reducing the percentage of the population experiencing extreme poverty from 11% to 1.4%.

Bolstering our Democracy

My Government’s ability to implement our very expansive programme of development will depend heavily on the strength of the institutional framework and the efficacy of the processes that must be deployed to carry out the mandate of the Government. We will therefore strengthen the office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretariat to allow them to play even more central roles in monitoring the implementation of the various policy initiatives. They will demand regular performance reports from all Government entities and issue directions from Cabinet aimed at ensuring that the projects, programmes, and activities of the Government are on course to realizing their objectives efficiently and effectively. We will also ensure that the Government policies are appropriately informed by the views and concerns of our people expressed through various consultative mechanisms.

In particular, my Government will establish councils or commissions with public and private sector participation to provide input in the policies established in relation to key sectors or issues including public sector modernization, crime fighting, youth development, health reform, and education reform. We have already established a competitiveness council to address competitiveness issues, and I am confident that this important council will make a very significant contribution to the development of our Federation.

We also intend to exert every effort to bring more energy to community life and to ensure that national policies take full cognizance of community issues and concerns. In this regard, I expect that our community centres will play central roles in community life and become hubs of activity. I expect your constituency representatives will hold regular sessions in the community centres and relay the issues of concern in communities to the Cabinet and the National Assembly, so that these important policy-making institutions would be more responsive to the needs our communities and our people.

We also want the public service to be more responsive to the needs of our people and to treat them as valued clients or customers when they approach the various Government Departments for service. As part of our public sector modernization programme, we are also determined that recruitment and promotion must be based on merit, and that no person in the public service or doing business with the Governmental entities, is victimized or discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, religion, political affiliation, or any other irrelevant attribute. We are also determined to make Government processes more efficient and transparent, and to strengthen the legislative provisions in relation to public procurement and the awarding of contracts. The manner in which the lands made available through the Special Land Initiative, have been distributed, has made it clear that my Government is strongly committed to the principles of fairness and equity, and intends to ensure that these principles are reflected in the laws, regulations, policies, and administrative processes.

We also intend to pursue constitutional reform with even greater vigour. We believe, however, that our people must be fully engaged in the reform process, and must take ownership of that process. Our NGO’s must be at the forefront of the process, and must conduct themselves in a manner that would inspire public confidence and ensure that at the end of the day, constitutional reform would not be about PAM and Labour, or NRP and CCM, or even about the island of St. Kitts and the island of Nevis. But that it would be about taking our democracy to an even higher stage and fostering a climate of peace and harmony that is conducive to the orderly, legitimate, and successful pursuit of our various human and societal endeavours.

Mr. Speaker, Members of Parliament, Fellow Citizens, the challenges before us as a nation are monumental, especially in the context of the competitive global environment that seems so prone to crises. We have done exceeding well over the past 15 years, but if we wish to overcome the challenges we face, and move to the next stage of development, it cannot be business as usual. We must free ourselves of the tribal inclinations that plague our politics. We must stop feeding our young people a daily diet of “hate” through many of the comments made on our numerous radio talk shows. We must understand that when we tarnish the reputation of our country in pursuit of narrow political objectives, all of us suffer. I am persuaded that as we traverse the very rocky global terrain, we will need all cylinders, not half. I therefore urge all citizens and residents to put ‘country about self’ and to come together in unity to secure a brighter future for all.