All across Barbados, there is consuming concern about the state of the economy and the way out of the enveloping gloom and doom. Against that background, the public welcomed last Sunday’s “Brass Tacks” programme with acclaimed economists Professor Avinash Persaud and Mr Clyde Mascoll.Unfortunately, the main actor who everybody desperately wants to hear from, the government, did not send a high level representative like Minister of Economic Affairs, Dr. David Estwick, or Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Senator Darcy Boyce to lock horns with the economists. The government’s spokesman was Parliamentary Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, Senator Jepter Ince.I have no idea if Senator Ince is an economist, but some listeners said they got the impression that on the subject of public finance there were fundamental differences between the two sides causing Mr Mascoll to make some unflattering sotto voce comments. Something that puzzled me was the senator’s repeated reference to “physical deficits” when the other gentlemen were focusing on the fiscal deficit.In the pervasive concern on the economy matched by continuing government silence, the well trained economists at Cave Hill seem conspicuously anchored in a silent zone. Time was in the halcyon days when Dr Frank Alleyne and Mr Wendell McClean readily shared their knowledge and expertise on economic issues of the day with Barbadians as a natural part of their societal responsibility.If the university is not to continue to be viewed as an ivory tower hermetically sequestered from the daily lives and concerns of the people who paid for their education and pay their salaries, then it is time that the intellectual panjandrums on the hill lend their trained voices and pens to the troubling situation fostering widespread uncertainty and anxiety.The same way that a radio station can respond to its listeners and perform its public responsibility by putting together trained minds to discuss the economy, surely UWI can put together a team from within the campus to perform a similar public function, shed light on the enveloping gloom and doom and point the government and people in the direction of possible solutions. WHO’S BOSS AT PARADISE?One of the projects projected to restart within months and help lower unemployment and generate foreign exchange is the Four Seasons development at Paradise Beach. When it started and ground to a halt in February 2009, information in the public domain suggested that the principals behind the project were Englishmen Robin Paterson and locally based Michael Pemberton of the Cinnamon 88 company. The international recession and withdrawal of funding by an English bank were given as reasons for work stoppage of the flagship project .After months of silence, inactivity and uncertainty, we were informed a few months ago that it would be resuscitated with Government backing and a $120 million loan from a Trinidad bank. We also heard that Professor Persaud would lead the rescue effort.Since then, all information relating to the project locally has come from the estimable professor, who to all intents and purposes was the new principal in the revived project. Then in the overseas property section of the London Sunday Times of July 04 under the caption “Barbados has the X factor,” Robin Paterson is quoted at length.Cinnamon 88 is described as “the Barbados-based company behind the resort” and Mr Paterson said: “We have substantial interest from new buyers anxious to take up the final opportunity to invest in these truly fabulous villas. All 21 will be completed and handed over by the end of 2012.”He continued: “We are delighted everything is now underwritten, enabling us to move ahead and restart the project.” There is no mention in anything he said about Professor Persaud’s involvement and there is nothing that I have heard from the professor confirming that Cinnamon 88 is still involved. Contributing to my puzzlement was a statement Thursday by the principal political adviser to the Prime Minister that Mr Thompson had asked Professor Persaud “to find a Barbadian solution to getting the Four Seasons project back on the road”.I am therefore constrained to ask if Cinnamon 88 and principals, Paterson and Pemberton, are still the main movers and shakers behind this project? After it ground to a halt on their watch, are they now part of the Barbadian solution? And against that background, precisely what is Professor Persaud’s role?
Mrs Malaprop reincarnateIn January of this year I mentioned my grave doubts about the mental capacity of former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to be President of the United States. I quoted extensively to highlight her short-comings and was inundated with calls, mainly from females, accusing me laughably of being racist and misogynistic. I trust that they are aware of her recent malaproprisms in a speech repeated on her blog, when instead of saying “repudiate” she said “ refudiate.” She also coined another new word “misunderestimate”. I also hope my critics, aware of these creations of the great modern-day Mrs Malaprop, still think she has or can develop the mental fibre to be president. She may have the intellect to be leader of the ultra right-wing “tea party”, but she has certainly never impressed as having the smarts to be leader of a great democracy like the United States. Her fellow traveler tea partyers may grotesquely compare President Obama to Hitler and caricature him as a monkey, but he is in a different intellectual league to Mrs Palin, the great Alaskan wordsmith.
Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat.
