#BTColumn – The real mission for Barbados in 2024

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

By Ralph Jemmott

In a reportedly 65-minute address, Prime Minister Mia Mottley spoke to the nation on a wide array of issues facing Barbados as it enters the year 2024. 

She also took the opportunity to make some changes to her Cabinet which she would later claim as ‘adding value’ to the country and the administration. Not sure what that means, but as a Canadian friend likes to say, ‘a change is as good as a rest.’  

It is good to see Marsha Caddle back in the Cabinet. She has a strong critical intellect and if there is any value to be added she should provide such. Much seems to be expected of Ambassador Chad Blackman who I do not know, but already there is talk of a future leadership role.  As always the Prime Minister was optimistic, articulate and not a little bit self-congratulatory. Barbados, she reiterates, remains on track for a great ‘transformation’ sometime around 2030 or thereabouts.

Barbados as of January 1, 2024, is by no means a failed or failing state. It has a myriad of challenges, some of which are deeply rooted in the culture and are not easy to solve. Some of these problems are political, many are financial and economic and the most deep-rooted and often disregarded are social and psycho-social.  

The political problem surrounds our capacity to remain a viable two-party democracy with a viable opposition that is able to responsibly critique government policy, offer realistic alternatives and if required, form an alternative government.

John Stuart Mill observed: “A Polity needs the constant agonistic dialectic of opposing perspectives so that the views of one side would keep the excesses of the other in check, otherwise irrationality results.” The two 30-to-0 defeats of the DLP were highly regrettable. It has led to a decline in the official opposition and the ostensible emergence of an autocratic tendency whereby power seems to reside inordinate in a single personage. This is nought for our comfort.

Barbados needs an effective opposition but it is difficult to see any significant revival of the DLP in the immediate future. The risk is a consuming sense of political apathy which would be in nobody’s interest except for those who in their own self-interest chose to align themselves with the ruling clique.  

One of the persistently bemusing aspects of local politics is the tendency for governments in power to write off opposition criticism as ‘noise’ and the critics as purveyors of ‘gloom and doom’. There are always things that require in-depth examination no matter what party is in office.  

Perhaps the most all-embracing challenge to the Barbadian polity remains the economy. No amount of wishful thinking by the present government or lamentation of gloom by opposition spokespersons can obscure the fact that the economy remains and is likely to remain structurally challenged. It may well remain under IMF sanction given its inability to earn the level of foreign exchange needed to sustain the rising expectations that we have come to cherish. One is not sure what it would take to fundamentally ‘transform’ or to use the current buzzwords effectively ‘build out’ the local economy.  

Tourism remains our best bet but there is the suspicion that much of the gains from the hospitality industry tends to remain offshore. This would have to change and with some urgency. It is not enough to talk about arrival numbers and empty chatter about ‘celebrities’ who are ‘on island’.

For the average Barbadian, the so-called ‘man and woman in the street’, inflation or the rising cost of living is arguably the greatest burden. Things are expensive here, particularly for those on a fixed or limited income. As a net importer of goods, much of our inflation is imported. High interest rates and persistent supply chain shortages and delays compound the rising costs. These are issues over which we have little or no effective control.

The other factor that fuels inflation is the government taxes that push up the cost to consumers. However, we can’t have it both ways. We expect the government to provide a vast array of social services including free university education and these have to be paid for through tax impositions. Nothing is truly free. This is of course not peculiar to Barbados. Canadians are crying out for rising inflation particularly as it affects housing in a country that appears to be experiencing a serious housing shortage.  

Collectively another problem is recurring indebtedness. Deficit financing is one thing but increasing debt is another. We need to borrow and the present government is not immune to foreign importuning. Barbados seems perennially in search of ‘funding’. Eventually, we, or future generations of Barbadians will have to repay the creditors. The world economic order is unlikely to change to suit us, Bridgetown Initiative or not. 

The cry goes out that we the people want to see the extent and cost of the borrowing and what we are borrowing for. The government can judiciously respond to the obligations to fix a complex road network that ranges from highways to cart roads. Barbados also has an ageing water delivery system also in dire need of repair and replacement. Both of these, the road and the water systems will take time and money.  

It struck me as nothing short of peculiar that in her 65-minute address to the nation, the prime minister failed to address the social and psycho-social issues facing Barbados. What Barbados achieved by the end of the 20th century was built on a recognisably high level of social order and psycho-social stability based on the sum of its accumulated social capital.  That human capital is now evidently under threat. 

It is highly to be regretted that the prime minister did not find time to address issues such as indiscipline on our roads and in our schools, pervasive crime and homelessness, the ZR culture, the emergence of an economic and social underclass and obvious indications of private and collective mental stress. Barbados is not just an economy it is also a society. I have warned about quoting the Trinidadian intellectual Lloyd Best who posited that the problems in the Caribbean are not primarily technical but cultural. Trinidad did not listen.  

Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator.