#BTSpeakingOut – Open letter to the Governor General

The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Margaret D. Gill, Ph. D.

Dear Madam Governor General:

I really do hope you read this, for if you become President of a Barbados Republic before you get to answer me, I fear it would be like spinning top in mud.

These ideas unearthed from my dissertation studies on leadership bear some reflection as you mediate on how to serve us your putative subjects at present in Barbados.

Your Parliament and mine in this crisis situation where Government has emergency powers because of a virulent pandemic, is nonetheless heading towards a debate of a change to republican status.

I really hope you take time to advise us, and trust your good judgement as your office demands.

Brian Meeks, quotes Theda Skocpol in his Chapter Caribbean Revolutions in a book on Caribbean thought: “The ways revolutionary leaders mobilise popular support in the course of struggles for state power, (has meant that) the emerging regimes can tackle mobilisation for war better than any other task, including the promotion of national economic development.”

I perceive, taking this quote further, that the questions of what is the role of leadership in the revolutionary moment and how should it be expressed is less about issues of a new state and new relations of power in a fundamental sense.

It is more about a particular existing formulation of power relations as they impact on the psychology
of being.

What are these formulations of power, and why do they not transfer vitality for more than war to future organisation and organisation for the future?

One suggestion is that they address specifically questions of sovereignty of one state in relation to others, and one mode of masculinity or patriarchy over another.

Further, formulations of power relations of the sort that engage the revolutionary moment in this way dominate all considerations of leadership, so that questions of who should govern, on what grounds and to what end are not deliberately and collectively discussed.

The latter are probably the questions that need to be answered once challenges to state formation
are successfully brought.

Instead, the most that gets answered in any constitutional discussions which get to be socialised
falls short at: who should lead and identifying the length of time the leader’s stint should last. (Margaret D. Gill, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, date uncertain)

I beg your intervention in helping us think through this matter of a Republic, before you become its President.  You can see the difficulty in asking you to do so after that has happened.

Margaret D. Gill, Ph. D. is Giving back as we are taught to do.