I cannot be intoxicated by headlines. I never said heads will roll. That language is not mine. I am not into the use of platitudes and clichés.
– Prime Minister Freundel Stuart.
MAYBE, THE PRIME?MINISTER is not! But we cannot help but note his generous helping of the overused 1 Corinthians 13:11.
We have no doubt that when Freundel Stuart was a child he “spake as a child, understood as a child and thought as a child”, and now that he is a man has “put away all childish things”. There will be no games with the general election date. Says Mr Stuart: “I really am no part of that childishness.”
And that is the calling of elections “in this Westminster charade” – “some kind of game” that seeks to catch the people off guard. And we thought it was the Opposition that Prime Ministers sought to confound!
Leader of the Opposition Owen Arthur has been duly advised now that the next general election won’t be until the end of this present five-year term, and no amount of calling for an earlier date will be to any avail.
“If the people give you a mandate for five years and you tell them five years is too long,” argues the Prime Minister, “they should never give you another one.”
No playing around with Mr Stuart!
But we wonder about his take on the Eager Eleven. The Prime Minister cries:?“No evidence.”
There was and is no proof “available to me that there was an attempted coup in Government”, an adamant Mr Stuart says. We note again that while in the absence of “proof” the Prime Minister obliquely pooh-poohs the notion of an Eager Eleven, he steers clear of any allusion to an actual request by Cabinet members for a meeting of minds on leadership and public perception.
Were we not reasonably led to believe these concerned ministers only wanted to talk – concession to which was immersed in tardiness. Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler had intimated as much in an exclusive Big Interview with the SUNDAY?SUN.
Nevertheless, in this season of good cheer it is pleasing that no heads will roll – whether the Prime Minister used the actual words or not. We can accept that he stated “if there was an attempted coup, the laws of history would apply: if the coup succeeded, the person at whom it was aimed would lose his neck, and if it failed the people who attempted the coup would lose theirs”.
But we fail to see how one who loses his neck can still have it firmly affixed to the trunk of his body, or by a stroke of fortune have it balanced on his shoulder, or even by greater luck have it firmly clasped in his hand.
Still, it is heartening to know the Prime Minister leads a Government that is united, a party bent on carrying out the undertakings of its manifesto. We would expect nothing less.
