KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Opposition Leader Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has dismissed the first budget of the ruling New Democratic Party (NDP), describing the fiscal package as “unimaginative” and having probably been written with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI).
Responding to the EC$1.9 billion (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) package presented on Monday evening by Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr. Godwin Friday, the Opposition Leader said the contents “met the low expectations in accord with an overwhelming, underwhelming set of estimates not fit for these extraordinarily challenging and perilous times”.
Gonsalves, who served as prime minister during his now opposition Unity Labour Party’s (ULP) 25 years in office, said the speech by Prime Minister Friday “reaffirmed my assessment delivered in the estimates that the government, the NDP government is treading water dangerously, grasping for breath, drowning” and is waiting “to be rescued from the metaphoric billowing seas of the regional and global economic turmoil”.
He said that the central, ill-advised public policies, the choices of the NDP government itself, and” its demonstrable incompetence and lack of curiosity thus far” were also exhibited in the budget address.
Gonsalves said all this is against the backdrop of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ small-island, open economy, with limitations and weaknesses, but with strengths and possibilities.
“The budget, both in its recurrent and capital developmental dimensions, is unimaginative in its strategic thrust,” Gonsalves told lawmakers, adding there is “a worthy continuity” of numerous ULP government’s capital projects but “a retreat and stasis in many others”.
Gonsalves said the fiscal package also contains “a few NDP bits and pieces, but some terrible policy pronouncements, including wanting to go ahead with the selling of passports and citizenship with traffics under the rubric of citizenship by investment”.
Gonsalves has long been opposed to the island’s involvement in the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme, which is carried out by several other member countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
Under the CBI programme, foreign investors are granted citizenship in return for making a substantial investment in the island’s socio-economic development.
Prime Minister Friday has already indicated that his administration will follow through on its campaign promise to establish a CBI programme later this year.
“There is little or no economic growth, wealth, and job creation as policy propositions advanced and undergirded by any numbers save and accept the vain hope that CBI will save us.
“… the real numbers, as distinct from the stylised data, do not lie. Indeed, the narrative supporting a lot of this stylised data in the budget speech, I found to be incoherent and not compelling, possessed of contradictory pulls and pushes…,” Gonsalves said.
He said that, like the estimates on which it is founded, the budget speech “is seeking to manage or control and dispense scarcity in accord with … some election promises made, the fulfilment of which is proving difficult, by twisting and turning hither and thither with deceptive campaign words that do not match the implementation in government.
“Thus, because of a distance between what the people understood to have been promised and what is delivered thus far, the trust — that invisible, vital bond between government and the people — is already broken, save and accept among NDP diehards and certain seekers of government patronage.”
Two months after the NDP came to office in one of the most decisive victories by any political party in St. Vincent and the Grenadines since the NDP won all the seats in 1989, Gonsalves said that there was “growing dissatisfaction with the performance of the NDP government even after nine weeks.
“The NDP government has enjoyed the shortest honeymoon in human history. There is little or no honey, and the moon is driving them crazy,” he said, adding that the moon is a metaphor for “the strained and anxious look and feel on the faces of our people”.
Gonsalves, one of the longest-serving heads of government in the Caribbean, said that part of the reason for the incoherence and contradictions in the budget speech is the government’s lack of any compelling narrative.
“It’s really innocent of all that we are facing in the region and the world, against the backdrop of what is the nature of our country’s economy,” Gonsalves said, telling legislators that part of the internal contradictions and incoherence “is because this speech delivered by the Honourable Prime Minister had at least four authors.
“I recognise, I listen very carefully to the language. He himself wrote a few parts of it, a small portion. Then, two principal advisors wrote most of it. I’m familiar with their writing. And there was a non-human author called ChatGPT,” Gonsalves said.
“None of the human speech writers was prepared to give up any of their language. So, the editing advice of ChatGPT was ignored, thus the repetitive nature of many things and the incoherence and even the wrong data points …”
During the budget presentation on Monday, Gonsalves, who sat largely silent, his hands clasping his face at times, had been referring to “ChatGPT!” and in his response to the fiscal package said that he “heard a chuckle about ChatGPT.
“The generic ChatGPT, and I’m sure you’re aware of it, have certain familiar giveaways,” he said, adding that they were present in the budget speech.
“The excessive use of the dash with no space before or after, excessive use of random bold print in numbers and phrases on some pages and not on others, and excessive use of short one-sentence paragraphs that bunch together; a hallmark of ChatGPT,” Gonsalves said.
“Those advisors whom you’re presumably paying a lot of money, you ain’t getting value for your money, may as well you had somebody, maybe the minister of technology, go on ChatGPT and give you a speech,” the opposition leader said.
The debate is continuing.
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