Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.
by Grenville Phillips II
The Queen.
When we were a colony, we had no national anthem. We sang the British national anthem, and bowed before the Queen and her representatives. When we became independent in 1966, we sang our own national anthem, and bowed to only God.
The Queen manages our international insurance policy. This policy is activated only if we elect a despot who starts to harm us, or if we are invaded by a foreign power.
To avoid our politicians crying ‘wolf’ over minor issues, the Queen has a representative in Barbados, to decide when to activate this policy.
The activists.
Grenada has similar international insurance. When activists took over the government of Grenada in 1979, and managed the country for about 4 years, the Governor General did not intervene. But when they killed 19 Grenadians on 19 October 1983, the Governor General activated the policy. Help arrived in less than one week.
When politicians and their activists start oppressing an uninsured public, no one is under any obligation to help them.
Today, there are many uninsured people suffering under despots, and desperate for help. Unless a country thinks that it is their national interest to help, they tend not to.
The United Nations Security Council may draft a useless resolution, asking the despot to stop the killings. But they rarely stop, so the people continue to hope in vain. That is the world in which we live.
In the Republic of Rwanda in 1994, CARICOM, Europe, Asia, America, and the United Nations just watched, as approximately 80,000 Rwandans were mercilessly tortured and murdered every day, for 100 days.
After 800,000 of them had been killed, everyone simply said ‘sorry’. Such is the lot of the uninsured.
The youth
Our activists are starting to target our youth, who are too inexperienced to appreciate the value of international insurance. They are being deceived that such insurance is colonial oppression and a waste of money. They do not understand that we have the privilege of owning the most valuable insurance policy on this planet, for which we pay a pittance.
It seems that Solutions Barbados stands alone in trying to pull Barbados back from the brink of insanity. We would be certifiably lunatic to give up our international insurance, just to please our politicians and activists – against whom we are insured.
Grenville Phillips II is a Chartered Structural Engineer, and the President of Solutions Barbados offering to represent St George North. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com
