"He Ought to Sit and Be Quiet": Senator Malaka Parker Blasts PM Browne for Speaking in UWI's Place, Brands ABLP Headquarters Deal "Political Profiteering"

Opposition Senator Malaka Parker has sharpened her month-long offensive against the housing of University of the West Indies (UWI) Five Islands law classes at the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) headquarters, and this time her fire is trained squarely on Prime Minister Gaston Browne, whom she accuses of installing himself as spokesman for a university that will not speak for itself, of peddling a bogus "rescue" narrative, and of presenting the nation with a false choice between the ABLP's headquarters and the collapse of the law programme.

"Listen, Gaston Browne is not the spokesman for the University of the West Indies. He's not," Senator Parker declared in her latest public remarks on the controversy. "It becomes deeply troubling that every explanation about UWI's lease, about the classrooms or its future, continues to come from the Prime Minister, and he is doing this on his very tightly controlled radio programme, while the University of the West Indies remains silent."

"He Ought to Sit and Be Quiet"

The Senator's complaint is not merely that the Prime Minister talks too much, but that his monologue has replaced the accountability the public is owed. PM Browne, she noted, "has not sat down in a room filled with journalists where questions can be asked and he provides the answers we need; he doesn't just tell us what he wants to tell us."

"I mean, the people are asking legitimate questions here," Senator Parker said. "Who approved this arrangement? What is the rent? Something as basic as that, we still don't know. And what alternatives were considered? These questions have been asked over and over and over, and we maintain — I maintain — that UWI has an obligation and must answer for itself."

For Senator Parker, the Prime Minister's monopoly on information about the deal is not incidental to the scandal; it is evidence of it. "Quite frankly, every time PM Browne speaks in place of UWI, he's only confirming the very concerns that we have about political interference and about the compromised independence of the University of the West Indies," she said. "He ought to sit and be quiet."

The charge that the university has abandoned the field to the politicians is one Senator Parker has pressed before. During a September 20 appearance on Observer Radio's Voice of the People alongside attorney-at-law Kelton Dalso — where she branded the arrangement "a totally corrupted thought" — the Senator described UWI's ongoing silence as "highly disrespectful" to the public. Nearly three weeks later, the institution has still issued no public statement on the arrangement, no lease has been published, and no rental figure has been confirmed.

"Not Generosity… Not Patriotism; It is Political Profiteering"

Senator Parker's second target was the narrative advanced by the Prime Minister on his weekly radio platform that the governing party stepped in to save the fledgling law programme.

"Another fallacy that I want to address is this idea that the Prime Minister is now pushing that somehow the ALP swooped in and rescued UWI... I guess, from itself," she said. "What we actually have, what is actually the truth, is that government, this very same Labour Party, created the problem to begin with, through stubbornness in the first place, and then by poor planning. And then it came in and inserted its own political headquarters as the solution, and therefore now is benefiting financially from this arrangement. So, the idea that they are the knight in shining armour for UWI, for our students or for this country it is not true."

The Senator's conclusion was scathing: "Somehow they expect the country to applaud them for benefiting financially from the consequences of their own failure, and that is how little they think of us in this country. Come on, we all know that it is not generosity. We all know that what is happening here is not patriotism; it is political profiteering. That's what it is. Nothing less."

The "poor planning" charge has a documented history. As a RealNews contributor outlined in "The University Dilemma: This is why Planning Matters," the Five Islands campus was converted from a purpose-built secondary school over objections that the site could not support a growing university. And as far back as 2017, PM Browne himself announced roughly EC$27 million in Chinese grant funding for additional classrooms, a lecture theatre and dormitories — an expansion that has yet to materialise. Senator Parker hammered the same point in her September 16 exchange with Foreign Affairs Minister E.P. Chet Greene, asking what became of the expansion plans presented in 2022, the public consultations of 2023, and the financing attached to them.

Notably, Senator Parker insists her objection would survive even the most charitable version of the arrangement. "And I maintain that even if the building were offered for free, the ethical and other substantial considerations make it a no-go from the beginning. It just should not happen," she said. A position which is consistent with her September 10 commentary, in which she wrote that the proposal "must be rejected clearly, immediately and without qualification by us the people," and warned that no student should ever feel that access to legal education requires entering the political home of the governing party.

"The Choice was Never ABLP HQ or the Collapse of the Law Programme"

The third pillar of Senator Parker's critique is what she calls the manufactured dilemma at the heart of the government's defence: accept the ABLP's headquarters or watch the law programme die.

"The false choice that Gaston Browne is giving us — or he's setting this thing up — it's not real, because the choice was never the ABLP's HQ or the collapse of the law programme. It could never be," she said. "It has been stated over and over, by persons other than myself that the government could have provided neutral accommodation. UWI itself could have rented an ordinary commercial facility, or they could have installed a modular classroom. You know, we were on a summer break for three months before these programmes began."

Senator Parker went further, questioning the very genesis of the programme. "In fact, when did the idea of the law programme begin to fester? I dare say that it was an election gimmick — a pronouncement made by this Prime Minister in April of this very year — and I dare say it was done, in my estimation, without any consultation with the university, without any regard for the university's resources, its limitations, or its own plans and schedule. That, in and of itself, is egregious," she charged. "And now UWI has gone and twisted itself to deliver a political promise on behalf of the Prime Minister. So this thing was a knee-jerk from the beginning."

The Senator also pushed back against suggestions that critics of the venue are enemies of the students enrolled in it — a framing she says the false choice is designed to produce. "You have students now feeling that those of us who are saying that is not the right place, we are wanting to deny them of an opportunity," she said. "The truth is, UWI itself offered online programmes during COVID. You know they did that. Thousands of students are getting their LLB online the world over, and we're saying that that could have been a temporary situation here."

And if the arrangement is as fleeting as the government claims, Senator Parker asked, why incur the controversy at all? "The insult to the injury is that if this is only for a semester, and it's going to be returning to UWI next semester then what is the point? Why do it to begin with?"

The Numbers Neither UWI Nor the PM will Confirm

Senator Parker decried the fact that what little the public knows about the arrangement has come almost entirely from the Prime Minister himself. On August 29, PM Browne said about 65 students had enrolled in the programme, that the ABLP's HQ might be rented for a "nominal fee," that the arrangement could save the government nearly US$1 million, and that the venue was a possible "last resort."

Beyond that, rumour has filled the vacuum. Senator Parker had previously referenced a rental figure of $30,000, which she noted was the cost of "two classrooms" for 65 students. She has warned that any payment flowing from the public purse to the governing party would be unacceptable and possibly criminal. Neither figure has been confirmed, and no contract has been made public.

The six demands Senator Parker laid out on September 16 therefore remain outstanding in their entirety:

1. Publish the lease.

2. Disclose the rent.

3. Produce the independent valuation.

4. Identify the alternatives considered.

5. Release the approvals — including whether the Campus Council and UWI's regional authorities sanctioned the deal.

6. Provide the campus expansion timetable.

   As long as the only voice explaining a regional university's lease is the Prime Minister, on his own radio programme, Senator Parker's charge of compromised institutional independence effectively answers itself. Her closing instruction to the Prime Minister — "He ought to sit and be quiet" — ensures the question will not fade quietly.

7. Whether the University of the West Indies finally finds its voice may now matter more than anything the politicians say next.