OJ Smith tells 3rd District to liberate themselves!
According to Mr. Smith, the 3rd District did not need divisions but rather leaders should try to unify the resources and strengthen the bond between people. “Leaders should never divide, never put family against family... Leaders should try to unify the people as the good book says “a house divided amongst itself cannot stand” and our communities are made up of several households.”
At this point Mr. Smith called up his two children to the stage and asked if they should be taught to hate each other. “Should we teach them that our children should hate each other? Should we teach them that our grandchildren should hate each other? So I ask the question what kind of growth are we creating in the BVI for the sake of politics and money? Imagine in a democracy we live in fear of a person or persons that we have empowered, that was supposed to empower us. Yet friends can’t talk to each other because of their political affiliation. This end result of our politics is not liberty it’s enslavement, enslavement through intimidation, through manipulation and victimisation.”
Mr. Smith further said there was no opportunity for liberty in victimisation. “So I say to you tonight people of the 3rd District, liberate yourselves because in order to divide you must either create or exploit hate. Hate produces division, division produces weaknesses and weakness lends itself to conquest.”
According to the youthful candidate, as a representative he would show love and unify the people to work together. “But how can we work together when the current representative does not even come to the people prior to making major decisions in the district? How can we work together when some are favoured over others? How are we to be unified when we try to make it seem that the reason that some were not given work during the four year period was because they did not have their good standing? I ask the question tonight how come all of a sudden in election time everybody has a good standing?”
Continuing his assault on the incumbent representative, ex-marine Smith said there could not be unity when the minister can call out names at his launch as a reference to fair allocation of work in his district. “Well let me tell you sir, as a person with experience in finance and economics, that you have to do what we call an apple and apple comparison. Let’s compare the value of all the work allocated in the last four years to the “Big Five” against all the other contractors in the district and let’s see how things have been shared out fairly,” Mr. Smith proposed.
Hannah's Bay Reclamation Project
Mr. Smith also questioned the validity of the plan for the Hannah's Bay Reclamation Project and whether it was a public or private development. “There has been this statement about development in the 3rd District and you would recall that some months ago the Department of Town and Country Planning issued a stop order on Hannah's Bay reclamation up in the harbour and I asked the question at the last rally why is it a private stop order on what is supposed to be a public development? Something wrong on top that cheese. He said the proper procedure for government development anywhere in the country is laid out according to the physical Planning Act 2004.
“Where were the public meetings, where not just only land owners but persons in the district were given an opportunity to voice their concerns over the project? Where was the opportunity to make ripping representation that the law sets out to the draft plan before it is even approved? Where has been the notification in the gazette?... Lawd but we saw land appear from nowhere and fencing went up as fast as the Jericho wall and now you want us to believe that is a government project. I am not buying it.”
According to the candidate, if a plan was approved in 1999 and the government changed, that approval from 1999 could not stand till 2011. “So you cannot come now and tell me, and tell us that you had approval because if you had approval there would be no stop order and if it was in Government plan then the stop order should have been either on the Ministry of Natural Resources and Labour or the Ministry of Communications and Works not Hannah's Bay Reclamation. Something wrong with that. ”
Hurtling out more ammunition, Mr. Smith claimed that all of the proposed development in the district “is occurring on the Frasers’ property. I am dealing with the facts because right over my shoulder down there we have torn down the mangroves and the young people are asking me what about environmental protection? They are throwing dirt at the root of the mangroves where our marine lives are supposed to produce their hatcheries. So tell me where is the development in that? It proves as if there is one set of rules for one person and another set of rules for everybody else.”
Capital Drain
According to Mr. Smith, when we ignore the law or ignore the policy or procedures it is the people themselves we disregard because laws are only there to protect the rights of the citizenry. “But what laws and practices we follow when we oust a local company and a thousand shareholders to bring in a foreign entity. My position is this. If a local company must go then opportunity must fall to another local company because continually outsourcing opportunity to entities outside the BVI further facilitates what we call capital drain, in other words when too much money leaving the country.”
He mentioned the Biwater deal as a typical example of capital drain and noted that the problem in the VI is not that the Territory does not generate wealth but rather the problem was that the wealth is not kept. Mr. Smith added that on a conservative estimate, half of the value that the Territory generates leaves it. “And if our ministers, if our leaders understood how our economy works they would have never signed that Biwater contract.”
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