Over the past decades, linkages between drug cartels and some politicians have been well established in several nations. The illegal drug trade has raked in billions of blood dollars across the globe with a significant sum greasing the dishonest palms of politicians, police officers, soldiers, immigration and customs officials, and any individual who can support the contraband leaving points of origin and reaching designated markets.
In Mexico, one court report a few years ago revealed how drug cartels in that country influenced national and municipal elections through massive monetary contributions to the campaigns of politicians. Earlier this year during the trial of drug baron Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias El Chapo, in the United States, light was shed on the crippling hold drug traffickers had on police and politicians in Mexico. A witness in Guzmán Loera’s trial testified that a former Mexican president had taken a $100 million bribe in exchange for calling off a nationwide manhunt for the drug kingpin.
In Colombia and several other countries in the Americas, the story has been the same. Drug money has proven orgasmic for unscrupulous politicians and other powerfully placed public personalities, insensitive to the social repercussions of their graft. Closer to home, the link between politicians and drug dealers has rendered some communities virtually unmanageable by law authorities. Indeed, these communities submit primarily to the control of drug lords.
In Jamaica, since the 1960s, both the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party have had links to drug ‘dons’ who have helped them maintain political control in garrison communities in Kingston and elsewhere. Despite entrenched poverty and deprivation in many of these areas such as Tivoli, residents remain loyal to specific parties because the drug dons that run their communities are in the bosom of particular political entities. During Congressional hearings in the United States, the late prime minister Edward Seaga, godfather of Tivoli, was linked to the late drug don Lester Coke as well as the notorious Shower Posse. The relationship between drug dealers and politicians across the globe is real.
Which brings us to Barbados’ official Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley. Yesterday, this man of the cloth made arguably his most telling and significant contribution to public political debate in the country. What motivated him at this stage to state what he did in the Lower Chamber yesterday is a matter of conjecture. But it should be noted that Mr Atherley has served as the representative for the St Michael West constituency between 1999 and 2008, prior to being re-elected to the House of Assembly last year for the same constituency. Yesterday, during debate in the Lower Chamber he said there were drug lords in Barbados who were being facilitated by persons who were involved in the political process. The bishop noted: “Since 2008 that has been clear to me, that there are people involved in the practice of politics [at the] elective level in Barbados who are attaching themselves to persons involved in illegal drug activity in Barbados, to help their cause and I dare anybody in here to stand and say that is not true.”
Mr Atherley added: “It is something that strikes at the heart of our democracy. It is something that strikes at the institutional heart of our governance process. It is something that strikes at the heart of wholesome community life in Barbados. It is one of the most sinister perils that we face today and I really would want to hope that the Government would have the resources, the wherewithal and the tenacity to ensure that something like that is brought to a swift halt.”
We would hope that if Mr Atherley has any evidence or detailed information to support any allegation that any current or former member(s) of our nation’s Parliament has or has had corrupt links to drug dealers, that he presents his suspicions or evidence to the Royal Barbados Police Force. As a man of God, it is incumbent on him to protect and safeguard his Barbadian flock, even beyond his parliamentary responsibilities. Whether he appreciated the import of his accusations yesterday or not, his was a damning indictment on Barbadian politicians, that if true, he needs to act with dispatch, or if mere politicking, he needs to retract.
But questions must be asked. Why has it taken this man of God, at the maximum, 20 years, or at the minimum, 11 years, to make this revelation? From his own mouth, this is something of which he has been aware for a long time and he neither said nor did anything about it publicly before yesterday. Additionally, Mr Atherley was sworn into this country’s 30-member Government in 2018 and at the time publicized images of persons reputed to be involved in the shady business he now speaks of were shown at the opening of Parliament bearing official invitations. Surely, that would have been an excellent occasion to register his disgust at how that situation could be perceived or interpreted. But he said nothing then.
We suspect Mr Atherley serves God first and then man. We believe he would be doing both a disservice simply to accuse the Barbadian polity of corruption without taking steps to reveal specifics to the relevant authorities in the hope of dealing with the problem.
