Within recent times this country has had many opportunities to reflect on our past and our good fortune in taking the lemons that life may have handed us and producing some of the best lemonade imaginable.
We have come a very long way from the first Parliament summoned on these shores, and as our Prime Minister so cogently reminded us, the past 75 years have produced more benefits for all our people than the previous 300.
During that time, bigotry, inhuman exploitation of black people, race discrimination and class and property discrimination crippled the creative genius that we have seen, now that we have emerged from the dark ages of the worst excesses of colonialism.
The celebrations of the anniversary were well merited but other views expressed recently require our immediate attention. Mr Bizzy Williams’ call for state funding of political parties should force us to confront some of those iniquitous practices that can so pollute our democracy as to render it meaningless. It is an idea whose time has come and the public must get ready to accept that there is a legitimate price to be paid for the maintenance of a meaningful democracy.
Our democracy is the platform on which we grow our economic and social successes and we must ensure that it is not hijacked whether wittingly or unwittingly by those who may have deep financial pockets and short principles. We must not return to another form of slavery and oppression based on money or property democracy. We must protect this critical aspect of the integrity of our electoral process.
But other matters also require action. This past week, our Minister of Sport reminded us of the commercial benefits to be gained from sport, and that should ignite renewed national effort.
We have Barbadians at the top of the international heights of leisure and sport, but we have not exploited these successes for the further benefit of the society.
Rihanna has brought much name recognition to our island but we need to do more to showcase this shining example of the Barbadian spirit. We have not yet understood the drawing power of celebrity. The house where she spent her childhood should be promoted so that it becomes an attraction for a particular kind of tourist.
The same should be done for the childhood homes of the Right Excellent Sir Garfield Sobers and of Sir Frank Worrell. Is George Washington House to be the only example of home as a cultural attraction? Isn’t cricket an important enough aspect of our culture to warrant a national effort to highlight these homes as tourist attractions to niche groups?
Mr Ronald “Suki” King has distinguished himself as a world champion in checkers for decades now, and Sir Ronald Michael Stoute, a Barbadian, has been a leading trainer of horses in Britain for the past 30 years. These gentlemen are household names in their chosen fields and attract international attention.
We need to finds ways of honouring them by exhibiting their achievements in a multimedia environment here at home which could attract visitors.
The West Wing of our Parliament is a permanent exhibition of that journey through the ages and it attracts its own clientele. But sport and the international achievements of our cultural and sporting icons are vital cogs in our tourism efforts. Bushy Park proved that. They need our attention too.