“Bad News Browne”, the legendary country character whose heavily traded bad news transported him to meteoric heights of animation, would have been in his element in 2013’s first fortnight.
The Alexandra School shambles with its lengthy gestation, bureaucratic incompetence and expensive commission of inquiry has left the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) in a state of elevated angst after the transfer of a number of staff and failure to get on the decision-makers’ radar to register its dissatisfactions.
Mr Jeff Broomes, who the BSTU insisted had to be separated from Alexandra, was transferred but his blood pressure spiked and doctors sent him on leave. We have heard from the ebullient BSTU leader that a number of her transferees have also been grounded with health complaints.
The major sufferers in this contretemps will be the students whose interest is paramount. When it ends and some semblance of normalcy is restored, students preparing for examinations in this unsettled atmosphere may have been seriously disadvantaged.
Speaking to an old teacher, he reiterated that God does not like ugly and what you sow so shall you reap. He strongly supports the transfers though he also believes that they were not as extensive as they should have been. He is also concerned as to who is teaching the BSTU’s head students at The Lodge School while she pursues union business.
The problems relating to LIME’s dismissal of 97 workers and intervention of their union, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), and the Minister of Labour, have landed in the Office of the Prime Minister’s for another meeting which hopefully will lay this matter to rest satisfactorily. The threat of a general strike greatly disturbed all patriotic citizens.
Last week, the Opposition Barbados Labour Party took a decision to absent its representatives from Parliament on the grounds that for the first time the governing party is continuing in office after the expiry of its five years. Not for the first time an Opposition has boycotted Parliament, peacefully dramatizing its point.
I was shocked to hear Minister of Health Donville Inniss tell the House on Tuesday that though there was an Opposition boycott, they had turned up for lunch. Of all that he said during his contribution to the debate, this allegation was selected by the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation for its major seven o’clock TV newscast.
It did not make sense to me and my enquiries rubbished the allegation. A poignant comment was: “If we are not going into the Chamber until after the elections, why would we go to eat lunch? Being in my constituency is far more important than lunch in Parliament. We cook at home.”
Heightening the political temperature was publication of a poll commissioned by the online paper Barbados Today conducted by Peter Wickham’s Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES) organization. With elections due within 90 days on a date determined solely by the Prime Minister, the projection that the ruling Democratic Labour Party will lose ten seats cannot be for the comfort of its candidates and supporters.
There are those among us who say they do not read the findings of polls. Others who read them say they are in no way influenced. Wickham, who was tutored by the excellent Pat Emmanuel and took over CADRES after his untimely death, enjoys region-wide kudos and recognition for the accuracy of his polls.
We live in a fiercely democratic society where people are free to believe in and be guided by things of their choice. The Prime Minister has said he does not read polls and pays them no attention. Most politicians with whom I have interacted in England, the United States and Barbados find them useful guides. It is my considered opinion that politicians ignore polls at their peril.
There is nothing which suggests to me that Wickham is partial to the Barbados Labour Party, as some people are now saying. Indeed, I remember him saying a few years ago that if he had to advise Owen Arthur, he would tell him to get out of politics. His recent polls identify him as the leader of choice and Prime Minister in waiting.
Added to the unsettled industrial relations climate and the silly season effluent preceding the elections, the Central Bank Governor reported no growth in the economy in 2012 and a larger fiscal deficit. Minuscule growth and declining revenues projected for 2013 hardly encourage any hope of improvement in our short-term economic well-being.
Embellishing the bad news, I must mention the dreadfully poor performance of Barbados’ Twenty20 cricket team and Pine Hill Dairy’s closure of its splendid yogurt plant under pressure from imports.
To sum up, in these turbulent times, bad news proliferates. With politics in command, not surprisingly CADRES found 59 per cent of those polled called for an election sooner rather than later.
The electorate must wait, hostage to Mr Stuart’s mature consideration!
• Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat.
