Senator Parker Fires Back at MP Greene: Publish the Lease, Disclose the Rent, and Stop the "Deflections" on UWI Law Classes at ABLP Headquarters

Opposition Senator Malaka Parker has issued a blistering rebuttal to Foreign Affairs Minister E.P. Chet Greene, accusing him of dodging every substantive question about the decision to house University of the West Indies (UWI) Five Islands law classes inside the headquarters of the governing Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) — and vowing to take her concerns directly to the university's international partners.

In a strongly worded statement, the United Progressive Party (UPP) senator said the Minister's latest intervention was built on "insults, red herrings, false choices and contradictions" rather than answers.

"Chet, you continue to twist yourself into a pretzel. You are unrecognizable my Comrade Brother!" Senator Parker declared, adding pointedly: "Chet you know better."

"You are Making the Point"

Senator Parker dismissed the Minister's habit of branding critics as political operatives, arguing that this reflex is itself the problem.

"Calling every critic a 'UPP operative' or part of a 'cabal' is not an argument," she said. "It is the very partisan reflex that makes placing university students inside the governing party's headquarters so troubling. You are making the point."

She also seized on what she described as a glaring contradiction in Minister Greene's defense — his rejection of an alternative Coolidge proposal on the grounds that a university requires a "cohesive campus environment," even as he celebrates an arrangement that removes law students from the Five Islands Campus altogether.

"If a cohesive campus is essential, then housing an entire programme off-site contradicts his own standard," Senator Parker argued. "An ABLP headquarters fails that test. FULL STOP."

"Clairvoyance Claim Absurd"

The senator ridiculed Minister Greene's suggestion that demanding proper planning amounts to expecting "clairvoyance."

"That is absurd," she said, insisting that growing enrolment and new professional programmes "were not unforeseeable possibilities. They were the purpose of establishing the campus."

"If the Government did not expect UWI to grow, it is you who underestimated the University's potential," Senator Parker continued, noting that "this was the very argument UPP was making." She added that if the Government expected growth but chose a site without room for it, "it planned poorly. Either way, it cannot transform its failure to provide suitable space into a triumph merely because the shortage has now occurred."

She also flagged what she called another self-contradiction: the Minister's citing of a 2017 Chinese grant for expansion as proof of forward planning. "If expansion was contemplated from 2017, how can today's demand for space be treated as an unforeseeable result of sudden success?" she asked.

Recalling that the Five Islands facility was "purpose-built as a secondary school, not as the permanent home of a growing regional university," Senator Parker pointed to expansion plans presented by 2022 and public consultations announced in 2023 — including "beautiful schematics" she said she viewed at a presentation more than five years ago — and demanded to know: "What became of those plans? Where is the construction? What happened to the financing announced over several years?"

"Growth may be good; being unprepared for foreseeable growth is not. It is incompetence," she charged. "Another knee jerk election promise gone bad and now you expect us to pay you for it."

A Barrage of Unanswered Questions

Senator Parker took direct aim at the Minister's assurance that the arrangement is "temporary," noting he has provided "no commencement date, termination date, construction timetable or funded alternative." Without an enforceable exit date, she said, "'temporary' is merely a comforting word attached to an arrangement that could continue indefinitely."

On the claim that the deal is a routine, transparent commercial transaction, the senator fired off a volley of questions:

"What is the rental amount?

What is the total value of the agreement?

What is its duration?

Was the property independently valued?

Were other property owners invited to submit proposals?

What procurement or competitive-selection process was used?

Who negotiated and approved the agreement?

Did the Campus Council and UWI's regional authorities formally authorise it?

Will the lease and supporting documents be published?"

"Until these questions are answered, the claim of transparency is another unsupported deflection," she said.

Senator Parker also mocked the Minister for describing the arrangement as both a "standard commercial transaction" and a "patriotic act of national service."

"Again, which is it? If it is commercial, disclose the rent, valuation and procurement process. If it is patriotic service, is the ABLP providing the premises rent-free?" she asked, adding that Minister Greene "cannot use the language of charity to praise the party while using the language of commerce to avoid scrutiny of the money."

Because the proposed landlord is the party currently forming the government — whose ministers double as senior party officials — Senator Parker said the relationship "demands greater disclosure and stronger safeguards, not less scrutiny."

"The Government's Failure … does NOT make its Party Headquarters the Only Possible Venue"

The senator rejected as a "false choice" the suggestion that the options were either the ABLP headquarters or delaying the law programme, pointing to available government buildings, educational facilities, conference spaces, private commercial properties, and the option of "temporary modular classrooms … placed on politically neutral land."

Far from insulting UWI or its students, she said, raising the concerns "protects them," since "students should not be required to enter the governing party's headquarters to obtain a university education."

Warning that the arrangement creates "an unnecessary reputational vulnerability" for a university that markets itself globally on its governance and institutional integrity, Senator Parker announced she would escalate the matter beyond Antigua and Barbuda's shores: "I will personally be reaching out to them ALL. This cannot stand with reason."

"I will NOT Relent"

Senator Parker closed with a series of demands:

"Publish the lease.

Disclose the rent.

Produce the valuation.

Identify the alternatives considered.

Release the approvals.

Provide the expansion timetable."

"Until then, Minister Greene (and Sen Phillip Shoul btw) has answered everything except the questions that matter," she said. "I will not relent. ABLP is not operating in a Kingdom. My taxpayers' dollars and good will cannot go towards funding my political opponent. You are asking for anarchy."

And in a final barb aimed at the Minister's political roots in the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement, she signed off: "Chet, as an ACLM graduate you know what I mean…."