ON A RECENT TRIP to St Vincent, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart spoke of an intention to have “a conversation” with the Barbadian people about how circumstances have changed since The Rt Hon. Errol Barrow’s time, specifically in relation to the provisions of the welfare state. This would be a welcomed discourse.
The continuation of Barbados’ substantial welfare provisions is a critical issue, given our debt and deficit problems and the persistence of substantial levels of relative poverty. Both political parties have declared their commitment to preserving the social safety net to protect “the most vulnerable in our society”. Secondly most Barbadians would welcome a conversation with a Prime Minister not particularly known for being “the great communicator”.
In a maturing polity, if politics is to avoid gridlock and persistent antagonism, there must be conversation because politics is about negotiating between different, sometimes conflicting interests in society. This assumes that the discourse reflects the higher purpose of furthering the greater good. A conversation cannot be a self-referential, self-serving diatribe. In the debate about funding university education, it was suggested that the “conversation” should not be about what was termed “fiscality” but about the role and contribution of the university which apparently trumps all else. No relevant conversation in Barbados and the region can ignore the fundamental issue of fiscality, if by that is meant fiscal prudence, As Dr Warren Smith of the Caribbean Development Bank stated on February 11, our fiscal deficits and overall indebtedness is the critical problem facing the contemporary Caribbean requiring us to put our affairs in order.
A conversation with a citizenry, if it is to be meaningful, cannot be a monologue. It cannot be a discourse with groups of tribal voters in chatter that tends to divide rather than cohere. Above all else a conversation must be about listening, even to one’s critics, no matter how exasperatingly contrarian they may be. In January, in dismissing the notion of an eminent persons group, the Prime Minister spoke derisively of “a lot of noise coming from some very strange quarters”. While Barbadians must guard against any attempt to undermine the democratic process, the narrow win by the DLP in the 2013 election would suggest that at least some of the “noise” reflects a genuine alternative perspective on this country’s present and future. Ironically, in all the noisy talk there is little semblance of an embracing narrative, no sense of project and purpose. As Matthew Taylor of the RSA Journal states, the problem lies not only in the structure and processes of political discourse but also in the content of the conversation. Increasingly with a decline in the tenor of our civic culture, issues are personalised in an increasingly coarse and vulgar fashion.
In his contribution to the second People’s Assembly organised by the BLP at the Foundation School, Dr Peter Laurie offered a “blueprint” for a serious conversational narrative that he suggested might lead to a national transformation. Regrettably in this land of “obscure men” with a temporary lease on power, critique is viewed as synonymous with criticism and politicians do not take kindly to criticism no matter what party they represent.
Generally we still inhabit a rather authoritarian culture. In an interesting article in the Trinidad Sunday Express of January 12, Sunity Maharaj opines that the authoritarian political culture in the region is a result of “the colonial legacy of power without responsibility and management without accountability”. It is tiresome to keep blaming all our present woes as some ostensibly irreversible inheritance of colonial tutelage. It is time to take responsibility for our own failings. The authoritarian nature of regional polities is evident and it inhibits meaningful conversation of the type that might enhance our economic, social and political well-being. Maharaj concludes that: “Authoritarian power develops no skill for negotiation, which is the defining aspect of democracy. Instead it chooses its weapons between bribery and force.”
Regrettably in Barbados, much of the discourse on economic and other matters tends to ignore the complexity and subtlety of the issues. Persons line up in their tribal political groupings. In part this reflects a certain qualitative deficiency in our higher education system where a generation has been taught what to think rather than how to think. In the early days of the Cave Hill Campus, Thouless’ Straight and Crooked Thinking was required reading for Richard Allsopp’s Use of English course.
The lack of real conversation also reflects a cultural pattern in post-Independence Barbados where the educated middle class that is best placed to advance the conversation, effected a rapprochement with and became part of the local establishment. This limits its capacity or critical contrarian analysis and protest. Intellectual protest as an aspect of “conversation” has, in Karl Friedrich’s words become, “hushed to a whisper, too weak and diluted to be audible”.
Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and social commentator; email [email protected]
