“An excellent opportunity for both reflection and celebration.”
That’s how Barbados’ leader, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, saw the 48th anniversary of the nation’s Independence.
In a message read by Dr Donna Hunte-Cox, Barbados’ Consul-General in New York, to hundreds of Barbadians who attended a thanksgiving service and flower show at the St Luke and St Matthew Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, Stuart looked back on the nation’s successes and its challenges, saying the “significant achievements which our nation has attained more than justify the courageous decision by our forefathers”, led by first Prime Minister Errol Barrow.
Interestingly, the Rev. John A. Rogers, Rector of St Luke’s Anglican Church, also saw the anniversary as a chance to look back on the country’s successes and to assess where it is going in the years ahead.
The anniversary, he told the congregation, “finds us at a critical juncture in the life of our nation and our existence as a people but with the promised land before us”.
However, the major difference between the messages of the Prime Minister and the visiting Anglican priest was the results of the reflection. For while Stuart hailed Barbados as a “socially balanced, economically viable, environmentally sound” country “with good governance”, all of which “will continue to define our journey as a nation” the priest painted a more expansive picture of accomplishments and potential troubling signs.
Take the Prime Minister’s sketch.
“There are two critical elements which have undoubtedly paved the way for all that we have accomplished, and which have enabled us as a people to be undaunted by the myriad challenges we have encountered,” asserted Stuart.
“These elements are our unwavering faith in God and the faithful commitment by the Barbadian diaspora to the development of our country.”
Bajans who live abroad, he added, have played a part in their birthplace’s development through their “love of the land of their birth”.
That partly explained why he remains optimistic about the country’s future.
“You have my assurance that my Government is working assiduously on the implementation of policies to ensure that Barbados is poised and positioned to attain an even higher level of development and to sustain that development,” he said.
Stuart pinpointed measures to deal with the deficit, overhaul the tax system and restructure the country’s productive sectors while ensuring the continuation of a “social safety net to protect” the country’s most vulnerable.
Yes, he said, Barbados has had its share of challenges over the years, “and most acutely in the past five years,” just like other Western Hemisphere nations in the wake of the “worst global downturn in well-nigh 100 years”. But what was also true, he said was that Bajans had “refused to cower in fear or retreat in hopelessness”.
As Father Rogers saw Barbados after almost 50 years of sovereignty, the island was a great place which had made an “indelible mark on this world with the prospect of doing even greater things”. And like the Prime Minister, he saw the hand of God at work.
But he struck notes of caution, warning against potential roadblocks on the horizon.
For example, although political tribalism was absent from the country and the differences between the two major parties were minimal, providing for almost seamless transition of power after a peaceful election, Barbadians should be wary of the results of the game of musical political chairs.
Afterwards, Rogers told the Sunday Sun that he was “just cautioning us to be wary that as beautiful as that system was, it required civic-minded people to make it work. “The day we do not get people who are civic- minded at the head of that process the results can be disastrous” for the country.
“I didn’t have any party or particular group of people in mind. I just want us to be wary,” he explained.
Rogers lamented the rapid emergence of clairvoyance in Barbados, promoted by a handful of spiritualists. They were promoting the North American idea of prosperity with religion a vehicle to become rich.
The service featured songs by an “Independence choir”; interpretive religious-oriented dancing; musical renditions by Otiba Griffith and Joan Belgrade. Peter Mayers and Quincy Dover were the organists.
As part of the celebrations, the Council of Barbadian Organisations in New York City headed by Randy Brathwaite, held a gala at Antun’s, a catering centre in Queens, attended by more than 200 people.
