Caribbean & Central America - February 2017 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, of the ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP), has accused the opposition United Workers Party (UWP), led by Lennox Linton, of attempting to orchestrate a coup. It seems an exaggerated claim.

Dominica has a history of awarding long periods in power to one party or another, and this may well account for some of the frustration. The DLP was in power for four consecutive terms from 1961 to 1980, after which it was kept out of power for four terms by a combination of the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP – which is no longer represented in parliament) and the UWP. The DLP returned to power in 2000, and it won again in 2005, 2009, and 2014. In the 2014 election, the DLP won by 15 seats to six (all held by the UWP).

Street protests in the capital Rouseau began on 2 February and then escalated badly on 7 February. The ostensible cause of the protests was the alleged corrupt mismanagement of the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme. The government says the programme is vital for rebuilding Dominica following Tropical Storm Erika in 2015 and that nearly 20% of the country’s employment, and 25% of government revenue, comes from the scheme. However, there are allegations of corruption, and there has been much criticism of the issuing of citizenship to Iranian national Alireza Monfared. The CBS News ‘60 Minutes’ programme alleged that the Dominica government had potentially breached sanctions against Iran.

As night fell on 7 February, police used tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters. The next day, Skerrit said that there had been an attempt to remove the government “without going through the ballots”. He said: “This action last night was planned, it was calculated, it was executed”. He said that the leadership of the UWP had orchestrated plans to storm the Financial Centre Building and “to occupy the building until their demands were met”.

According to the prime minister’s account, the UWP leadership had failed to follow police orders to end the demonstration, and “this was when and where the cue was given for persons to do whatever they deemed necessary to forcibly and unlawfully remove a democratically elected government from office”.

An opposition MP, Thomas Fontaine, was arrested and detained for a few hours on 12 February following his radio show, and the following day Linton said that he thought he was going to be arrested as well. In a Facebook post, Linton said that Fontaine had been arrested “under instructions from the Skerrit dictatorship…for speaking the truth and standing up for the good of Dominica”.

Linton also made a statement saying: “Let me be very clear, I know absolutely nothing about any coup or any attempt to overthrow the government apart from what I heard Roosevelt Skerrit say in his address to the nation.”

The government is continuing to try to reassure people over the CBI programme. The point they make is that the country suffered damage from Tropical Storm Erica amounting to 90% of GDP and that “the citizenship by investment programme was a lifeline”. Officials running the programme claim it is “the most transparent programme of its kind in the world”. The problem is that significant sections of the community remain unconvinced.