Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by Hyacinth Greenidge
Recently in North Korea, autocratic leader Kim Jong-Un, to mark the 10th anniversary of his father Kim Jong-il’s death, declared 10 days of events for the occasion.
However, for those ten days he decreed that North Koreans could not laugh in public or shop. No, this is not fake news. No laughter in public.
North Koreans have lived in an environment of suppression and oppression for so long that there is perhaps a young generation that is unaware of what oppression and suppression are.
Thus, Kim’s edict is maybe being adhered to as though it is the most natural thing to do. The administrative Government is less than one per cent of the 26 million population.
Yet, tyranny prevails. North Koreans have themselves – not their government – to blame for their situation. But who knows, they perhaps know nothing else.
The Government knows the people it governs. It knows the lengths to which it can go and are confident that such is the state’s control that edicts such as not laughing in public is completely natural.
In Barbados, politicians also know the people over whom they lord. They are quite aware of how far they can push the button. They act in a manner where irrespective of their deeds, well-placed allies will spread their narratives, make sense out of nonsense and even convince Barbadians that the island is favoured by God.
In most democratic nations, take for example the USA, if the attempt to bring vaccines into Barbados through the backdoor as occurred recently had been unearthed, those complicit in the deed would have been held accountable. But in Barbados, such will not occur because Barbadians allow it and politicians know what they can get away with.
While Government is docking the pay of hard-working, long-suffering nurses, it has agreed to pay thousands, perhaps millions, to more than a dozen policemen who lost a lawsuit against the state. And Government is making a political payment not even a court-ordered one.
Government is doing this because it knows it can get away with it because it knows the people it is governing.
Government sat with an organisation with whom it had no industrial relations dispute, made decisions with an association with whom it had not been at public loggerheads but failed to sit and come to an agreement with the union representing the nurses with whom there is an ongoing dispute. But Government did this because it knows the people it is ruling – not serving.
It knew that it could get away with such a slap in the face of the Unity membership.
One cannot blame the Barbados Nurses Association, the National Union of Public Workers or the Barbados Worker’s Union when they appear to sit on the fence or nestle in the arms of Government in labour disputes.
The leaders of these organisations make up less than one per cent of the membership. Thus, if the membership of a labour union truly understood what trade unionism meant, members would be exiting these trade union shells with their emasculated leadership en masse.
But leaders make these type of anti-labour decisions because they know the subjects they ‘represent’.
Last year, Jamaican investment firm Victoria Mutual Wealth Management which incurred losses in the Barbados Government’s debt restructuring programme, said that because of the pandemic our government would have difficulty paying bond holders.
It advised that rather than buy high-risk bonds, investors should be looking to sell them.
This came after Government’s 2018 decision not to honour payments due at that time, but to defer payment in many instances for another decade.
This scuppered the immediate plans of thousands of bond holders, forcing some retirees back on the job market.
Yet in 2021, Government is looking to legislate bond payments as a replacement for cash it might owe to Barbadian citizens.
Again, if Government did not know the Bajans over whom it lords, it would not even think of enacting this legislation, notwithstanding any financial constraints it might have. But
Government’s spending over the past two years suggests there are no constraints.
These are but a few examples of what Barbadians allow less than one per cent of the population to inflict upon them.
So, the next time you seek to blame the Government for any travails that you might be enduring, for any glaring missteps, for any anti-citizen policy, for any seemingly high-handed endeavour, for any egregious act, for any wastage or gifting of your tax dollars, please do not.
Instead, look in the mirror, point at the person staring back at you – you are doing this. Not the Government. But at least you can laugh at yourself in public.
