Hard times
At the territory looks back on another tough year, it should celebrate 2011’s successes and learn from its challenges.
Unfortunately, the latter outweighed the former during this election year, as the Virgin Islands continued to struggle in the face of a global economic recession that hasn’t improved nearly as quickly as many experts originally predicted.
Still, there were some steps in the right direction:
• The new incinerator, for example, was finally fired up, though it still lacks a much-needed scrubber;
• the November election saw remarkably high voter participation and received good marks from international observers;
• various community organisations worked together with government on projects including recycling, eliminating invasive lionfish and clearing the ruins at Fort Purcell; and
• progress continued on the national health insurance system, to name a few.
But the most prominent headlines of the year involved the territory’s economic struggles, a topic that also dominated the election campaigns. Several major capital projects stalled, including the new hospital and the greenhouses, and each month seemed to bring another sign that the territory’s finances were in serious trouble.
This trend came to a head recently with the dispiriting news that because the VI has violated its borrowing guidelines, the United Kingdom may refuse to approve a loan from the Caribbean Development Bank to repair infrastructural damage caused by last year’s flooding. The UK also is requesting to see the territory’s budget in advance each year.
Granted, many of the recent economic challenges resulted from factors beyond the territory’s control. But we believe these problems were greatly exacerbated by short-sighted leadership decisions that failed to get the VI’s financial house in order at a critical time.
Such failings, we suspect, were a large part of the reason voters swept the Virgin Islands Party government out of power in the November elections, giving a nine-to-four mandate to the National Democratic Party.
We hope that the members of the new government will learn from their predecessors’ mistakes — and from their own. If they don’t, the territory likely will continue a downward slide that will be increasingly hard to reverse.
Perhaps the biggest lesson the VI can take from 2011 is that the prosperity on which this territory has casually floated starting in the early 1980s cannot be taken for granted.
With these considerations in mind, we wish everyone a joyous, safe and reflective holiday season and a happy New Year.