By E. P. Chet Greene
ST JOHN’S, Antigua – The United Progressive Party (UPP) has placed a preposterous and insulting posting on the Internet and is attempting to pass it off as a manifesto.
It is not.
There is no proper, coherent document that the people of Antigua and Barbuda can hold in their hands, read from beginning to end, examine, compare, and retain as a permanent record. Instead, the public is directed to a scattered collection of online fragments, dispersed across a website, with no single, clear, and authoritative statement of policy.
This is not accessibility; it is not accountability; it is nothing but contempt for the people of Antigua and Barbuda.
More fundamentally, what has been posted reveals a deeper and more serious defect.
There is no consolidated fiscal framework; no integrated explanation of how the many promises being made will be financed; no serious costing, and no coherent, structured national programme.
From what little they have posted, the UPP is making commitments that would require the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet nowhere do they explain where this money is to come from.
The people of Antigua and Barbuda have seen this before.
Between 2004 and 2014, the United Progressive Party presided over our country’s economic collapse and their engagement with the IMF to pay their bills. This led to severe hardship for our people, including the reintroduction of personal income tax, the imposition of the Antigua and Barbuda Sales Tax, and the dismissal of public servants.
Today, the same party is again making wide-ranging and costly promises, but once more without showing how they will pay for them.
A manifesto is not a series of website fragments. It is a contract with the people that is clear, structured, accountable, and measurable.
The UPP has offered no such contract.
What it has offered instead is uncertainty, improvisation, and a troubling lack of seriousness at a time when the country requires discipline and clarity.
The contrast could not be clearer.
-
-
- Read the ABLP Manifesto 2026 Online.
-
The Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) has presented a full, accessible, and verifiable manifesto, grounded in a record of delivery and setting out a clear and responsible plan for the future.
The UPP has produced a website excuse. They must wheel and come again.
