You expect me to believe THAT?

I really should play the lottery, you know.  After all, a week ago I had already foreheard/predicted what the prime minister was going to tell the people about his “capitulation” on the third-country-deportees deal – after his grandstanding came to an inglorious end.

But before we speak of the end, can we examine the lies and deception at the beginning?

December last year was when the prime minister casually let it drop that, in August 2025 – four months before disclosure – he had signed with the United States a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to accept third-country deportees for resettlement here.

When the Nation heard about this, thinking folks asked why he had kept it a secret, noting that Antigua and Barbuda was already under the gun of the State Department and the door to US visas was going to be barred against us.

But let’s back up a bit: Some of us had heard the key turning in the lock and had warned the country of what was about to go down.  However, the prime minister smugly denied it, and assured the people that he and his ambassador were too skilled at negotiations for this ever to happen. He said, basically, that it was scaremongering by Opposition voices.

When it did, in fact, happen on January 1, 2026, we were told the State Department had shut us – and Dominica – out because of its dissatisfaction with how we were running the Citizenship by Investment Program.  Not so?  

Then the prime minister assured us, again, that they were working assiduously to plug the holes, and we expected that all would be well after the US authorities conducted their review by July 1.

So what’s this new and sudden story about them having been told – by whom he didn’t say – that the visa ban and bond had been imposed because he hadn’t signed the MoU by December? 

Is the prime minister saying now that the State Department lied and he allowed the lie to stand? And if he had, in truth, signed the MoU in December, then why would the USA still drop the hammer on us in January?  Somebody’s nose is growing by feet and yards here….

Bad enough, but it’s not the only lie: The prime minister said, on his radio show on Saturday, July 4, that he’d shared the MoU – actually published it – last year. Shared with whom, I wonder, because no Opposition parliamentarian, and no journalist/media house, and no civic organization can remember receiving it, and no Internet search has produced it.

In fact, on January 4, 2026 – exactly six months before the prime minister told this lie – the Opposition Leader (and there were six Opposition MPs at that time) – put out a press statement calling for “the immediate disclosure of any … agreements with foreign authorities on this matter….” So, with whom, exactly, did he share this MoU?

Another thing: When did he ever say, before Saturday, that any of these deportees would be “in transit?”  I certainly never heard that one before this weekend and I’ve been paying pretty close attention. 

It's not even the naked deception on this one that irks me, though.  I know already that the gullible will somehow “remember” he told them this before.  But it’s the sycophantic brown-lipped choir behind him, finishing his sentences and trying to convince the dying-to-believe, that “flabbers my gast,” as they say on social media. In fact, maybe a new verb should be coined to commemorate this episode: “flabbergaston.”

Now, after all the grandstanding has petered out, just like I told y’all, here he is, begging the people to make him a hero for accepting these deportees and telling you, “You can’t fault me; I tried….”

He's admitted, too, that the deportees will come.  But what about the number limit he said he’d “firmly” imposed? What about the conditions for acceptance?  What about the negotiations for a “sensible” compromise?  The deportees are coming and, as far as we’ve been told, only an MoU has been signed. Not a Memorandum of Agreement.

The deportees are coming. So, at this point, what is the point of the after-the-fact White Paper?  The deportees are coming.  So of what use is the parliamentary debate promised for the week of July 13, when the “Ayes,” of course, will “have it?” And when it’s probably too late for even King Fyah to write a calypso called “Lying Excuses, Part 2” about it… .

Wouldn’t it be interesting though if, among the deportees, we get some of the 330,000 Haitians – folks who look like us – the United States is now kicking out? And wouldn’t it be ironic if, in this “harsh country,” as the prime minister calls it, they end up being lodged among the Dominicanos in the new housing project expected to resettle the Perry Bay squatters?  And wouldn’t it be magnifique if, in a show of equality and welcome, the Cabinet would make French our third official language …?

Until next column, “Au revoir, mes amis!”