#BTColumn – A fearful symmetry

by Ralph Jemmott

Invariably, we end each year with the hope that the incoming one will be better than the last. 2021 was an awful year. The pandemic that we hoped would wane has, if anything, gotten worse. There is no sign that COVID-19 will go away anytime soon.

On the day that I penned this article, Trinidad and Tobago reported some 610 deaths for the month of December. France reported the highest daily number of COVID-19 cases since February 2021 when the pandemic began, some 180,000 in 24 hours. In fact, we are now confronting two strains of the virus at the same time, the Delta and Omicron variants.

I lost a favourite sister in July and the grief is still with me. My ‘grandchildren’ were away at Christmas doing snowangels in the Canadian snow. For the first time in decades, I did not put up a Christmas tree.
Nothing much to celebrate and one looks to 2022 with a ‘fearful symmetry.’ Those two words, fearful and symmetry, derive from William Blake’s famous poem Tyger! Tyger!

Burning bright in the forests of the night. The word symmetry implies, among other things, the disposition of various parts.

To quote one of Dame Patricia Symmonds’s favourite poems: “The world is too much with us: late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” The world in 2022 promises to be even more asymmetrical, more out of joint, with its parts less favourably disposed.

On the night of December 27, Prime Minister Mottley sprang another surprise on the people of Barbados.

The first was the Throne Speech announcing that Barbados would become a Republic in November 2021. O.K. The second was that Robyn Rihanna Fenty would be our tenth National Hero. Fait accompli.
The most recent came on 27th December, two days after Christmas, that nomination day for a new election would be in less than seven days and that the election would be held less than three weeks away on January 19, 2022.

The little worm in the press on the next day was to the point. It showed a Barbados with its pants down saying ‘We en ready.’ Listening to the Prime Minister’s speech, half way through, it occurred to me that it might be about ringing the bell. But I said that can’t be, not so soon after Christmas and with a pandemic still very much in evidence.

The question is why has the Prime Minister again chosen to act ostensibly with such haste, an unprecedented 18 months before elections are constitutionally due. The PM herself has suggested that it is to put an end to the so-called ‘silly season.’ She assumes that an election victory that confirms her incumbency would put an end to the political silliness coming from opposition sources.

One example was the Opposition Leader’s statement that the Government was following IMF dictates rather than listening to the people. She may also have had a quarrel with Senator Franklyn’s stand on the nurses’ issue. Both of these did smack of some measure of foolishness, but a measure of silliness is always intrinsic to politics as politicians pursue their partisan interests.

The calling of an election by any government is a political act. It reflects that government’s assessment of its chances of winning at the upcoming poll. Winning for any political leader is invariably the overwhelming consideration. He or she cannot pursue a legislative agenda unless they win.

The notion that the bell ringing represents signs of panic by Ms Mottley is ridiculous. Far from, it represents a confidence and a deliberate strategy, knowing full well the current weakness of the alternative parties, particularly of the main DLP.

Apparently, six of the DLP’s candidates are still to be named . . . not the government’s fault, of course. The tolling of the bell has caught everybody except a few insiders offguard.

Some say it is a smart move. The question is smart for whom? Too often, smartness in politics, naked self-interest, political expediency, if you wish, tends to negate what Simeon McIntosh once called the virtue of politics and the politics of virtue.

Virtue can become a pretence. Promises are made, never meant to be kept. Politics, they say, is a contact sport. If you bruise easily, stay out of the game.

There may be something mean-spirited and bruising about the calling of an election 18 months before it was due and at such short notice. I expect interest in and turnout to be low.

Why in the present climate would anyone gather at a meeting to hear political clap trap? The Mottley-led BLP is in no danger of losing the January 19, 2022 General Elections. Ms Mottley is still regarded as the best person able to govern Barbados, and her administration can point to a number of achievements. In very challenging circumstances, it has not let Barbados down and, as I said before, it has not been asleep at the wheel.

My problem is not with what the Prime Minister has done or not done, but with the way she has gone about it, particularly with the precipitous haste with which initiatives are pursued. Maybe she wants to prove that she is no ‘sluggard.’ Unlike her predecessor, she is not.

However, truth be told, the people’s interest may rest in reducing the current imbalance in the People’s House of Assembly just to ensure that Barbados does not become a de facto one-party authoritarian state. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but it is a foolish characteristic of the Bajan to say: “What will be, will be.”

The Prime Minister claims that politics is dividing the nation. When was it that politics did not divide a nation? American democracy, which once seemed so secure within a constitutional infrastructure that appeared indestructible, is now under severe threat.

The Republican/Democratic party divide has become so bad that there is talk of a second Civil War. We live in difficult times inhabiting a ‘fearful symmetry,’ a confusing disposition of the various parts of our individual and collective lives.

Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.