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CASTRIES, St Lucia -- The Lucian People's Movement (LPM) says that Sait Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony has a final chance to implement the value added tax (VAT) the proper way, by heeding its earlier warning to the government "to delay the implementation of the VAT to 1 January 2013, so as to fine-tune and better define a tax system that is yet largely unknown to the general populace.”

“The people of Saint Lucia must fully understand what they are up against, before being taken like proverbial lambs to the slaughter,” the party said in a press statement.

The LPM pointed to the recent announcement of the construction stimulus program on 23 August 2012, which up to now has not been fine-tuned and has not yet been brought fully on stream.

The LPM said that if the prime minister does not cease from his bad habit of rushing to make premature announcements, the country is bound once again to run into a situation where the implementation of the VAT on 1 October 2012 will create more confusion rather than prove that the government was ready and that the appropriate structures were fully in place to accommodate the government’s green light to go ahead.

The LPM said that Anthony's uncompromising attitude towards governing the country sends a wrong message, which will eventually cost him and the Saint Lucia Labour Party the goodwill towards his administration from the majority of Saint Lucians after the last general elections.

Governance is not about public chastisement, and always making a public show and irrational pronouncements when in fact things are not what they seem to be, but a serious undertaking, which places the nation’s interest over personal ego and political stubbornness,” the statement said.

“Dr Anthony must begin to see himself as the prime minister of Saint Lucia (in which the opinions of the other half of the nation are just as important as his), and not continue along the narrow path that he has undertaken as the prime minister of the Saint Lucia Labour Party,” the LPM said.

Saint Lucia, the LPM contended, needs real leadership and statesmanlike attributes, not more of the same colour-dominated politics that have hindered iys interests, particularly over the last 15 years.

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