What’s Left to Say But ‘I Told You So?’

After the 2024 US presidential election, African-Americans took a collective hands-off position, vowing not to get involved in what they were certain would follow Kamala Harris’ and the Democrats’ defeat. 

In no time at all, history was being whitewashed; thousands of professionals, Black women, especially, were losing federal jobs; while people of colour systematically were being stripped of the glory they had earned in sports and in the military. The Constitution was being undermined while the justice system was having its guts ripped out, and ICE was freezing the veins of immigrants and refugees alike.

Through it all – protests, demonstrations, “No Kings” marches – the Black community, dubbed “the 92%,” steadfastly refused to be drawn into the arguments or to participate in the action, on the grounds that, “We warned you.” 

Why am I bringing all this up? Well, it’s what I’ve been thinking about for a few days, ever since someone repeated to me a public figure’s remark that there is “no Opposition” in Antigua and Barbuda.”

My response, then, was a genuine question – “What do people really want?” – asked with 85% amazement and 15% amusement.  After all, when you’ve seen the future and rung the alarm to tell the very same people what is going to happen, what, really, is left to be said, other than, “I told you so?”

But nobody wants to hear that truth. Instead, it appears that some folks want those who rang the bell (less than six months ago) not only to ring it yet again, but to play a different tune.

Oh Lord, Jack! Did it have to come to this for y’all to believe that little Antigua and Barbuda was headed for trouble?  That, instead of the “complete vindication” boasted by the prime minister, the Alfa Nero would rise again like a ghost ship to haunt our stores? 

That the prime minister playing fast and loose with our Citizenship by Investment Programme would end up jeopardizing not only his primary source of non-tax revenue but our access to US visas and the payment of our Social Security pensions?  And that embracing and envoy-ing  Alex Saab Moran would leave our diplomatic relations and offshore banking sector vulnerable to shutdown?

Now, here you are, still in the honeymoon phase, and the bride is casting about looking for a new spouse and asking where all-the-good-man-and-dem gone. Ma’am, they’ve gone where they were sent: to the viewing gallery to watch this marriage play out. And  you really have the heart to be vexed?

And then we have the apologists, who are too embarrassed to admit that all is falling down like London Bridge – and that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be enough, after CHOGM, to put it together again. 

I hear them on social media, talking fast and loudly to drown out the wails of the sufferers.  “Antigua and Barbuda don’t have oil,” they declare, as if that is breaking news, and claim that things would’ve been no better if the UPP had won the last General Election.

The dishonesty.  As if fuel prices are the only things affecting us and as though the UPP Administration hadn’t gone through a period that saw oil surging to US$147.50 a barrel in June 2008 – followed by the collapse of BAICO, CLICO and the Stanford Empire in early 2009 and preceded by the global financial crisis in 2007.

And there are those who, without following their argument to a logical conclusion, will crow: “And the UPP took us to the IMF!” 

So I will ask them:  And where’s the dishonour in that?

The IMF loan receipts of US$101 million at an interest rate of no more than 1.2% brought no sanctions against us.  Canada did not revoke our visa-free status as a result.  Antigua and Barbuda enjoyed “paradise” – not pariah – status with the Schengen countries and its citizens traveled freely in most of Western Europe. And, for certain, our friend the United States of America did not bar the door to our businesspeople, our students, our patients, and our holiday-makers.

As a side note, it is interesting to calculate that the Browne Administration rejected approximately 26% of the amount borrowed from the IMF when it privately sold the Alfa Nero for US$26 million less than had been publicly offered. I wonder how much the “defense” is costing us now.

… But here we are now that the IMF has been commanded to “get on your bike;” hit the road, Jack; and don’t you come back no more, no more: Overwhelmingly dependent on a devalued passport that not even Caribbean immigrants want to apply for, never mind the world’s rich wanting to buy.  With a comatose offshore banking industry. With a yachting sector that, post-Alfa Nero, has seen the once-world-famous Sailing Week run aground.  With not even one direct flight out of JFK right now and no word on a Jet Blue replacement.

Meanwhile, the struggle continues…with electricity, with water, with worsening roads, with a still-closed Cancer Centre and struggling public healthcare. And, of course, with crime.

The Opposition not only told you so; it offered you an alternative with a blueprint. Yet, here come the critics, the obstructionists, and those with buyer’s remorse complaining now that Antigua and Barbuda has no Opposition. 

They remind me of Dives, the rich man in Luke chapter 16, who, after he ended up in hell, implored Lazarus, the beggar whom he’d ignored in life, to bring him even a drop of water to cool his tongue.  Alas, the divide was too great to be crossed, said Father Abraham.

Fortunately, however, here in Antigua and Barbuda, the divide remains bridge-able. All the sufferers need to do is cross over… .