‘We Must Build Better Citizens’: PM Browne Calls for Cultural Reform Beyond Economics
Prime Minister Gaston Browne has called for a shift in national development priorities to include greater focus on cultural, moral, and social progress, warning that economic growth alone is not enough to create a well-rounded society.
Speaking on his Browne and Browne programme on Pointe FM, Browne said: “We have to go beyond the traditional aspects of governing. Before, the focus was almost exclusively on the economic aspects — providing a job, helping people to earn enough money to buy a car, a home.”
He argued that the current model overlooks deeper issues that affect the fabric of society: “I think we have to look at the governance of the country in a more holistic way… I want to know that maybe a couple decades from now, Antiguans and Barbudans are significantly brighter than we were before in terms of the quality of education — and also that we become a better cultured people.”
The Prime Minister said building morally sound citizens requires investment in soft culture, such as the performing arts, as well as spiritual and communal engagement.
“Even in terms of crime and violence — if you notice, developed countries as they evolve, they’re not as barbaric as they were centuries ago. But I don’t think we are spending enough time on the soft issues and building a better cultural society,” Browne said.
He also noted the government’s increased support for initiatives like the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus, the Antigua and Barbuda Institute of Continuing Education (ABICE), and the upcoming Performing Arts Centre, to create platforms that foster both academic and cultural growth.
“It’s not just about our culture as we see it traditionally. Culture evolves from time to time… If we’re going to become a more creative people, then we have to engage the use of technologies like AI to ensure there’s some improvement across all aspects of our development,” he added.
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Now your bank account is full to the brink, you now talking about building a better people, you got to be kidding me?
Nice words Browne Bwoi, but I’m afraid you have squandered the last 11 years you have been in office, and under your crafty governance, Antigua has become just a place of hustlers, where all the people have seen, is the money grabbing schemes from this administration.
So, as the days of Sadom and Gomarah, so has Antigua become. The Gambling, the prostitution, the promiscuousness, the partying, all have been the symbols of this island for the past 25 ears, and it has gotten 10 folds worse under your governance.
And now you come talking about ” creating a better cultured people”.
Blood is on your hands Gatson..Asot was even caught in the cross fire, so were the many missing and murdered innocent victims that lost their lives to gun violence and a lack of policing.
They Gun down Manny like a dawg, and not one word came out of your mouth.
He was an innocent man Gatson..
You didn’t fight for any justice for the people, so your words will fall on deaf ears.
Hypocrisy at its best, that’s all I see from this man.
You are no hero Gatson, just a pompous rich man.
“Build better citizen” my ass. Self centered rich old fuck minimum wage is stagnate while everything rise. How that makes sense you are taxing your people to death with VAT, import duties which affect the average person more than your rich friends.
You sell land and passport to foreign elites, grab land and property for yourself to make a profit such as the farm and land in Barbuda you acquired”. You brag about how good the GDP looks like if idiots don’t know how it’s measures it doesn’t measure how much money the people have and how they life it just measures how much is being spent don’t matter if it’s 1 person spending $1mil or 1mil persons spending $1.
Maybe you should take the hint that gambling, prostitution and partying have gotten worst because people are looking for a little joy in their life just sometime they don’t have to stress about tomorrow and life in the movement. Maybe that one opportunity they will hit it big. Healthcare is falling apart schools are falling apart and not everyone can afford to get 3rd level education. Crime have been proven to have a direct link to financial inequality, poverty is why crime as gone up. The money is all being funneled upwards to the people on top, if you’re a worker you are statistically most likely to die a worker.
You owe so many people they had to go on strike and put you out of their building. You have government buildings in town condemned for years, putting public workers in hazardous conditions.
I don’t know if you are pushing the work hard America love to push when they spit on their people or just ignorant to the fact that you are neglecting the country putting no opportunists for people in fact you take a lot of them away. All this economic growth is built on a house of cards one strong wind will blow up and you will not suffer at all it’s us that will starve in the streets while I bet you would just pack up and leave.
I don’t know why your party is called Antigua labour party, you don’t care about labour you all are literally rich self centered business men. I am not even going to put Barbuda in your name because you don’t care or respect it’s land or people. You make Antigua a joke. Antigua is full of shit under you administration
A couple of pieces of land for peppercorn price that they can sell for a few million will help. What is good for you and yours is also good for them.
@islanman 26: just stop it, the hon Gaston brown has been building better people of wealth in this country, look at the white people and them getting pink sand beach front lands in Barbuda that when resold turn them billionaires, with the special buffer zone that separate whites from black and police enforcement of colored swim areas with m-16 machine guns, you couldn’t want anything better than that unless you are looking for a dystopian society. The hon for using the police and military with Uzi machine guns and parliamentary legislature to fight the barbudans for their lands , but society is better for the white people, too bad you and I are black.
Anything to do with economics is reserved for the inner circles of Gassy.
No one must ever have the opportunity to say that he has the same name as his father and he purchased property anywhere around the globe other than Gaston A Browne.
No one must be economically inclined to purchase government land to flip but Gaston A Browne.
Instead everyone must be on a stage making fools of themselves while the Browne family rips Antigua from under their feet.
Ordinary Antiguans must concentrate on beach vending while Gassy and family acquire wealth selling away Antigua.
Ordinary Antiguans must focus in being servers in the hotel industry while Gassy builds his hotel and employs them as cokks and bottle washers.
These we put in office keep taking us for idiots, they fatten them and their families pockets and treat us as dirt. The grab the Prime lands at peppercorn prices, resell them for millions; when the ordinary man or woman wants a piece you are sent from pillar to post and if you are fortunate enough to get a piece it is so small that when you build your next door neighbour can hear and smell you if you fart in your house and even if you get kne of the government built property you have to start repairing while you are paying the bank.that is screwing poor people back and belly. Idiots like Faithful National # 1 is comfortably with this treachery
Correction: and even if you are fortunate enough a piece
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