Politicians – particularly prime ministers – who taunt the Press play with fire. Time and again, politicians who treat the media with contempt and derision get their just deserts.
The Press is the people’s own mouthpiece; their very own sure vehicle of self-expression. Their only guaranteed opportunity of questioning their parliamentary representatives and calling them to account.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, a man of history, must know this. His unprovoked potshots at the Press therefore trump his best judgement.
The Press is not going to slink away merely because Mr Stuart claims not to take it seriously.
The CLICO?debacle, the only one of its kind in the history of Barbados, and the findings in the forensic study of it are worthy of substantial comment by the Prime Minister of this country.
That Prime Minister Stuart, by his own admission, has not seen the CLICO judicial manager’s forensic report is more a failing or lack of effort on his part than it is an overeagerness of THE NATION to have him respond to a circumstance which he would apparently devolve upon another.
“I understand there is an interim report,” Mr Stuart repeated in Parliament yesterday during debate of the Estimates Of Revenue And Expenditure 2012-2013. “I repeat I have never seen it. I saw reference to its content in a local newspaper. Let me see the report. I am not relying on anything I see in that newspaper.”
And among that to which Mr Stuart refers as good reason for not relying on this newspaper is a NATION report in which an eight-year-old boy said he was attacked by a security guard at school – which incident the child later confessed to police had not actually happened. As may be expected of any professional news organ, THE?NATION carried information as it unfolded.
In any case, the child, who bore the mark of injury, made the report to his mother and the police – which charge would come under scrutiny. The truth will out.
These red herrings will not distract us. There is a CLICO forensic report, Prime Minister. You will read it, see what is in it, draw your own conclusion.
And we shall await with bated breath your erudite pronouncement. It was never THE NATION’S intent to dragoon or coerce you, Prime Minister,
to put your mouth in gear before your brain. While the Government remains “concerned about the CLICO?issue”, we are ever eager to see the commitment made to policyholders by said Government pursued, and some resolution brought to this awful state of affairs.
The CLICO judicial forensic report as published and its profound implications will not be made any less true by the irrelevant reference to the St George Secondary School affair by you, Prime Minister.
Reliance on such is to repeat many a mistake of history.
