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Promises Made, Relief Denied? Dr. Ellis Webster Critiques AUF’s First Year in Office
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Dr. Ellis Webster Opposition Leader. Image Credit Facebook.
In a political moment that has electrified conversations across the island, Leader of the Opposition Dr. Ellis Webster has delivered his most forceful critique yet of the Anguilla United Front. Summing up the AUF’s first year in office with four cutting words — “promises made, relief denied”— Dr. Webster argues that the administration rode into power on pledges of economic ease but has instead presided over rising supermarket prices, unchanged electricity costs, and a complete absence of meaningful relief programmes for struggling families. According to him, the very people who needed help the most were left behind, while the government’s flagship GST policy dismantled the goods tax and triggered price hikes across essential goods.
AUF February 2025.Image Credit: AUF Facebook
Dr. Webster didn’t hold back on the ripple effects of the AUF’s tax structure. Restaurants, bakeries, and small businesses have raised prices, he said, after being squeezed by the new system, a system even the Minister of Economic Development admitted could cause prices to “go up a little or come down a little.” For Webster, that uncertainty is exactly the problem: decisions affecting the cost of living should be grounded in research, not guesswork. Instead, he argues, Anguillians are paying more for food, more for daily essentials, and more to simply survive.
When pressed on how his own administration would have handled GST, Dr. Webster was clear: his team had already drafted plans to remove GST from all food items, reduce GST for first‑time home builders, and consider lowering the overall rate, but only after completing the studies required by the UK’s strict financial guidelines.
He reminded the public that when his party took office in 2020, Anguilla was facing a EC$97.1 million deficit, and the UK’s fiscal rules meant the government couldn’t freely spend its own revenue. His administration, he said, stabilised the country, protected public servants from salary cuts, and worked to free Anguilla from those constraints so future governments could write and approve their own budgets without external oversight.
Now, with those restrictions lifted, Dr. Webster argues that the AUF has squandered the opportunity. “They have free rein to write the budget how they want and spend how they want, and they’ve messed it up royally,” he said, calling the current situation a “travesty.”
He insists his team had responsible, research‑driven plans to review customs duties, reduce costs for home builders, and restructure taxes in a way that genuinely eased the burden on families.
So here’s the question now gripping the island: Do you agree with Dr. Ellis Webster , was the AUF’s first year truly a case ofpromises made but relief denied?
