A useful perspective for understanding Caribbean post-colonial leadership is that of authoritarianism and the historical absence of a willingness to widen the democratic habits and culture of the society.
Central to this perspective is the claim that the experience of the plantation had prepared neither the rulers nor the ruled for the democratic business of give and take, open dialogue, consultation and respect for differences of viewpoint and social location. As such therefore, the Caribbean political leadership, despite the onset of independence and one man, one vote, is no different in outlook and political behaviour from the plantation overseer astride his horse, wielding his whip over the heads of a cowed populace.
Interestingly, in the Caribbean popular imagination, authoritarianism is associated with loud aggression and bullying. The politician with the acerbic tongue and quick-witted insult fits more naturally the common understanding.
In contrast, the silent leader is associated with decency and gentleness.
This is important for understanding the current reality of Barbados, since the Barbadian Government has settled on a strategy of silence as its main response to the economic and governance challenges.
However, to greet human suffering with silence is a tyranny worse than verbosity and aggressive bullying. To utter “let them eat cake” is a milder insult than to act it out with arrogant silence, since it sends the message that the people are not worthy of the sound of your voice and that you are unaware of their plight.
It is bad politics to remain silent when many of the things which demand explanation spring from the decisions of the government itself. It is tyrannical to remain silent on the non-payment of severance to National Conservation Commission workers when it was on the advice of the Prime Minister that they took their concerns to an industrial tribunal, of which nothing has been heard since.
One gets the impression that someone is having a smug, quiet laugh at a well played move, as if leadership is reduced to a chess game while human beings suffer. Perhaps the practitioners of silence cannot distinguish between scoring political points and providing genuine and good leadership to a trusting public. Perhaps after losing so many political battles, winning becomes everything.
There is however, a more worrying side to this tyranny of silence. Whilst the popular imagination has tended to associate silence with wisdom, there may be a more obvious explanation, which the people, like in the Emperor’s New Clothes, are too afraid to admit.
Maybe the silence of our leaders, however difficult it may be to accept, is less analogous to that of the wise man that chooses his words carefully, but is more reflective of the unprepared student at the back of the class, who bends his head and prays for the bell when called upon to respond to a question.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email [email protected].
