In a sharply framed public response to prominent Dominican public figures Yvor Nassief and Kenny Green, leading Dominican legal and governance advocate Gabriel J. Christian, Esquire, lays out a urgent, evidence-backed case for national course correction as the Caribbean island nation counts down to its 50th independence anniversary in 2028.
Christian opens by commending Nassief for stepping into the public arena to discuss Dominica’s governance, economic trajectory, and democratic future, while challenging Kenny Green to move past partisan defensiveness and engage substantively with the critical questions raised. He emphasizes that the debate is not rooted in loyalty to any single political party, but in upholding the core pillars that the independence generation of the 1970s fought to enshrine: the rule of law, transparent public administration, full economic self-determination, and uncompromised democratic norms.
The first core line of critique targets what Christian frames as the most severe failure of modern Dominican governance: the steady erosion of public financial safeguards and apparent disregard for open, competitive public procurement protocols. He calls out the lack of accessible public records for high-stakes, government-led projects, including the new international airport and the widely promoted national housing program. Christian specifically questions the absence of published tender documents, competing bid evaluations, and formal award justifications for projects linked to Montreal Management Consultants (MMC), and flags the alarming gap where many beneficiaries of the national housing scheme occupy units without formal, registered legal title to their properties. He stresses that full public disclosure of all relevant contracting paperwork is not a discretionary favor from the government, but a non-negotiable fiduciary obligation to Dominican citizens.
Next, Christian turns to Dominica’s rich, undercelebrated legacy of indigenous industrial entrepreneurship, highlighting generations of local pioneers who built thriving, community-centered enterprises long before the modern Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program generated large national revenues. He pays tribute to the Nassief family’s foundational contributions, from Elias Nassief’s early entrepreneurial work to chemical engineer Phillip Nassief’s leadership of Dominica Coconut Products, one of the most successful agro-industrial ventures in the nation’s post-independence history. He also honors iconic local business leaders including John Baptiste “JB” Charles, Robert “RBD” Douglas, and Sheridan Gregoire, alongside beloved homegrown brands spanning textiles, agro-processing, and iconic 1960s and 70s domestic soft drink lines such as Try-Hill, KB Cola, and Ju-C. Christian notes that these enterprises thrived despite the steep barriers of a small island economy, limited capital, and high global transport costs, yet today that once-vibrant indigenous industrial base has been allowed to stagnate instead of being modernized with targeted investment, technical training, and expanded access to international export markets. He argues that the substantial revenue flows from the CBI program should have been used to cement a robust foundation for Dominican-owned enterprise, rather than enabling an overreliance on external contractors, passport marketing operations, and foreign-controlled projects that displace local ownership rather than strengthen it.
Christian also cites the 2018 relocation of Ross University School of Medicine from Portsmouth to Barbados, in the wake of 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria, as a critical wake-up call on national economic resilience. For decades, the university formed the backbone of a thriving academic tourism ecosystem that supported thousands of local small businesses, from landlords and restaurants to transport operators and local retailers, yet no coordinated strategic plan was deployed to retain the institution or replace its substantial economic footprint. He argues that Dominica, with its extensive global diplomatic networks and highly skilled diaspora, has all the assets required to build a fast-growing knowledge-based economy, rather than allowing high-value productive institutions to exit without a concrete renewal strategy.
Addressing the fact that Nassief and his family have past and ongoing business ties to the CBI program, Christian pushes back against attempts to dismiss his critiques on the grounds of prior commercial associations. He affirms that every Dominican citizen has an inherent democratic right to revise their positions, acknowledge past misjudgments, and speak out against systemic misrule they now identify, and that the appropriate response to public criticism is transparent, evidence-based rebuttal rather than attempts to disqualify speakers based on their history.
Christian warns that Dominica risks replacing the old colonial plantation economy with a new, equally oppressive model of dependency, where the levers of major economic activity are controlled almost entirely by foreign interests, while ordinary Dominican citizens are left reliant on political patronage for survival. He questions why the CBI program’s unprecedented revenues have not nurtured a large, thriving Dominican middle class of local manufacturers, tech entrepreneurs, and agro-processors that can create high-skill jobs for the nation’s young university graduates, many of whom are now forced to migrate overseas to seek economic opportunity. He stresses that true national development is never measured by grand public buildings or political photo opportunities, but by the share of local citizens who own productive assets, build marketable skills, and participate meaningfully in shared national prosperity.
Christian issues a formal public call for Kenny Green, a leading figure in the Dominica Association of Industry and Commerce (DAIC), to join Yvor Nassief in a fully open, unscripted public debate covering the full scope of these critical issues: public procurement accountability, CBI revenue management, indigenous industry policy, and sweeping electoral reform to strengthen democratic safeguards, including independent electoral administration, full transparency in political party financing, and strict rules to prevent misuse of state resources for partisan gain. He also condemns the culture of anonymous online personal attacks that distract from substantive policy debate, arguing that civic discourse should be rooted in evidence, mutual respect, and intellectual honesty rather than cowardly character assassination.
Closing his remarks ahead of Dominica’s 50th independence celebrations, Christian reflects on the idealism of the 1970s independence generation, who fought for national self-governance not to replace colonial administrators with local leaders who evade the law and erode public institutions, but to build a just, prosperous nation rooted in dignity and self-reliance. He warns that failing to act now to course-correct will leave Dominica trapped in a cycle of misrule, economic dependency, and institutional decay, masked by superficial public festivities the local community refers to as “sewo.” He concludes that Dominica belongs not to political parties, well-connected contractors, or privileged commercial interests, but to all its people, and that citizens must unite to demand the higher standard of governance their independence pioneers fought to deliver, for the sake of current and future generations.
COMMENTARY: Dominica deserves better: good governance, indigenous industry, and the betrayal of our independence promise
