Former Chief Minister Oswald Skippings has come out swinging against the Washington Misick-led Progressive National Party (PNP) administration and the opposition’s Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), who lost at the polls a year ago.
In a letter released online, Skippings, a former leader of the PDM, who later broke away to form the Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA), dismissed the government as clueless and the opposition as a failed administration.
He noted that under both administrations the lives of Turks and Caicos Islanders have become miserable and depressing.
“Mid-term report by a clueless government, a necessary rebuttal by the opposition who was the previous failing government only two years ago; and the miserable, depressed, deprived lives of our exploited Turks and Caicos Islanders rumbles on,” he said.
“The same hum drum, political rhetoric that has become the norm, designed to appease their political base, knowing that it's either one or the other of the two failed political parties that will be awarded the distinguished privilege of governing our country at the next election,” he added.
The 68-year-old former chief minister pointed out that the two major political parties have established a strangled hold on the electorates, to the point that the people have become mentally boxed in to either of the political bodies and have refused to escape.
“Our boxed in minds refuse to escape the psychological political stronghold that has not allowed us to think out of the box and beyond the tentacles of the two established, traditional parties, not allowing you to choose a third party or competent independents who have their country's and people's interest at heart…people who have the know how, the courage and the credibility to secure a modern, democratic and workable constitution from the British..representatives who have the vision of progressive diversity and the innate, exuberant urge to promote, represent and empower our Turks and Caicos people,” he said.
He said the country needs: “Leaders that would unite the private sector and race factions in our islands, politicians who would embrace the outcast and rejected who have been sidelined and relegated to under the tree, on the wall, in the barrooms.”
Skippings pointed out that the Turks and Caicos Islands has become fragmented and needs unanimity, asserting that there are politicians with clean hands in the two established political parties as well as the PDA, pointing out further that only a few current politicians who have not been compromised.
“We need unity! There are brilliant minds out there, businessmen, clergy, civil servants, regular working people, inspired youth, supporters of both established parties and the PDA. Moreover, though not many, there are still a few serving politicians from both sides that have not been compromised,” he said.
Skippings called on the country to reject both the PNP and the PDM and to coalesce around a third party that has better vision and the gumption to move the country forward and not being easily snared by special interest groups or individuals.
“We need to come together as one and support a new inspired entity and save what's left of our country, an entity that is not entangled in witchcraft and controlled by special interest groups that buy elections and the resulting government. We need a group of caring Turks and Caicos Islanders that is focused on our country's interest and not their own or that of their party,” Skippings said.
The tough-talking Skippings urged the people of the country to break free of the mental slavery imposed on them by not only the British but also their fellow Turks and Caicos Islands politicians.
“My people, let's free ourselves from mental slavery imposed on us not only by the British, but by our own black, native Turks and Caicos politicians. We deserve better, but it's up to us! We hold the keys to our freedom and our progress; That single, free vote, that we have squandered, sold and given away for too many years for the wrong reasons, ‘Just Like That’.
“For God's sake, for our country's sake, for our people's sake and for our children's sake, let's free ourselves, unite, and do the right thing. Elections are not as far as they seem,” he concluded.