#BTColumn – A cautious optimism

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

by Ralph Jemmott

In spite of my misgivings about the state of my country, I still have a sense of cautious optimism about its future.

55 years on, Barbados is not a failed or a failing state. The enterprise of political independence has not collapsed and today Barbados is still a functioning polity.

Addressing the Institute of Chartered Accountants in April 2015 Owen Arthur stated:  “Barbados has emerged as one of the world’s superior examples of civilised development. It has managed to accomplish a great deal of that which is good for many while having so little to work with.”

However, progress is not representable by a geometrically upward line. Empires rise and fall and here in the tropics, things rust and decay and as Carl Moore reminds us, the jungle grows back.

The main problem that we face is one that the whole world faces, that is the COVID-19 pandemic. As the America poet Robert Frost once said in another regard, “to get over this, we have to go through it.”

My great fear is that, given the people that we are, we may lack the social discipline to control the spread of the virus. At the time of writing, deaths from COVID stood at 204. Scary. In his column of November 12, Richard Hoad jokingly ‘elected’ me to replace him as the “voice crying in the wilderness”. As one

American once said, “if nominated I will not run and if elected I will not serve.” The joke got really bad when ‘Lowdown’ recalled the fate of John the Baptist who lost his head when Salome demanded it in exchange for an erotic wuk-up or was it a good Middle Eastern belly-dance. Whatever.

Richard Hoad and myself both recall John Hammond’s mantra that “whatever you read or whatever you are told, always retain a rational sense of doubt.” Perhaps because of that I have for better or worse developed a very critical cast of mind. One is particularly critical of things said by politicians and university academics.

Politicians have a feral instinct for their own survival and most university academics have never run anything but their mouths. The feral instinct of the politician very often leads him or her to sacrifice principles for expediency and to do and say things that impact negatively on the very people they were elected to govern.

It for this reason that I inveighed against the possibility of Barbados becoming a de facto one party state. A multiparty system is one guarantee against tyranny and totalitarianism.

An aware and vigilant public is another imperative safeguard. It was Winston Churchill who said that “the malice of the wicked is aided only by the weakness of the virtuous.”

The politically democratic architecture of Barbados has held firm over the past 55 years. This is no guarantee that it will always suffice. Remember that after the 1976 defeat, a person or persons within the DLP urged Mr. Barrow to disavow the results of the elections and remain in power against the will of the people.

Sometimes it is not the maximum leader who is to be feared but those smaller men and women who surround the leader seeking favours and sinecures. Invariably, these are persons who are not concerned with the virtue of politics or the politics of virtue.
Half of a term in office is too short a time to judge the premiership of Mia Amor Mottley.

Our Prime Minister is what Barbadians like to call “a bright person” articulate and quite knowledgeable. In many respects, today she stands head and shoulders above any individual in local politics and is perhaps the one best suited to the leadership.

However, few people are totally ‘bright’, there are always areas of cognitive understanding that escapes us and in which we lack proficiency. Most of us have an intellectual blindspot.

Sir Courtney Blackman admitted that Tom Adams was a very bright man. In Blackman’s thinking, arguably the brightest to have held the Premiership of Barbados.
Donald J. Trump is probably one of the dumbest persons ever to run for political office. He is truly a dangerously ignorant man and we are seeing the awful consequences. Yet, he became President of the United States and leader of the so-called ‘free world’. Who would have thought that Trump would continue to hold the grip on the Republican Party in the way that he has. What is most characteristic of

Prime Minister Mottley is her abundance of energy, her ability to get things done. But both intelligence and energy must be focused and constrained by principle that goes beyond political self-image, symbolism and public relations.

I don’t know that our Prime Minister wants to be in any respects a dictator. The dictator label is one that has been applied to every leader of Barbados that has held power.

What I have observed about our Prime Minister is that she rushes things and does not in my opinion, think things through with the discernment they require.

She has promised to ‘go the whole hog’ and abolish the Eleven Plus and introduce total zoning. Not being an educator I am not sure she understands the complex educational and social ramifications of so doing.

In early September, we were told by Dr. Idamay Denny that by the end of that month we would have ‘a blueprint’ on education reform. It is now mid-November. Maybe the implementation deficit has already set in.

There is one area of policy that all Barbadians must be aware. It is not for our comfort. This concerns the apparent desire of the Mottley administration to increase Barbados’ population by some 87,000 persons, because we do not have enough people on our 166 square mile rock.

His Excellency David Comissiong was on TV saying that the increase will come first from other Caribbean territories and “brothers and sisters” from Africa. Did anyone notice that according to Mr. Trevor Prescod, in the Belle Gully region a non-national was taking money from persons for the sale of Barbadian Crown land, soon to be Republican land.

While you were sleeping Bajan, while you were sleeping. Truth be told, we do not know what kind of republic Ms Mottley wants to fashion. She must tread carefully. She has lost ground over the issue by the way she has gone about it.

Luckily for her, the DLP is ill-placed to carry the fight to BLP and a leader who has established a voice and a presence. I am not sure we are getting the substance.

Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.