Leaders of the opposition United Workers Party (UWP) have expressed renewed concern about the government’s management of the Citizenship By Investment Programme (CIP).
According to UWP 1st Deputy Leader, Guy Joseph, citizenship packages can be leveraged to influence the outcome of elections in the coming years.
The UWP recently expressed concern over an alleged number of citizenship packages approved by the government for CIP Agent, Caribbean Galaxy Real Estate.
“Can you imagine in 10 years, you can have 50,000 Chinese in St. Lucia, who have a legitimate right to spread out in all constituencies and to vote,” he said along the sidelines of a UWP-led demonstration at the CIP headquarters on Monday.
According to Joseph, voting patterns in Saint Lucia show that the winning party needs just over 40,000 votes.
“Now let’s follow the voting patterns in Saint Lucia over the years. The most votes any political party has had to form a government is about 45,000 votes. That is less than the number of Chinese who are coming into the country. So do you know how easy it is in Dominica, in St. Kitts Nevis and in Saint Lucia, Grenada, for you to have the Chinese government setting up their people in this region and that they can actually form a government?” He said.
UWP Public Relations Officer Lenard ‘Spider’ Montoute, on the other hand, claims the government has received $600 million in revenue from the CIP Industry and is demanding that the authorities account for it.
“Who are they sharing that 600 million with? How come we, the owners of that passport, the people whose citizenship, the Saint Lucian citizenship belong to, cannot get an answer as to what is happening to that money?” He said.
Photo: UWP demonstration. Image credit: DBS Television
Guess who is asking for CIP money? Lopo. By the way how much money derived from the sale of passports from 2016 to 2021? And what was that money used for?