One of the major strengths of the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) administration in Barbados is its ability to substitute propaganda for genuine achievement. This was seen clearly in the 2013 election campaign when a false debate over privatisation versus nationalisation, and claims of Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) intentions of mass layoffs and social welfare reversals, formed the centrepiece of the Government’s re-election bid as a distraction from an honest discussion of post-election possibilities.
Similarly, the DLP’s famous slogan that Barbados Is More Than An Economy; It Is A Society, not only served the purpose of denying the BLP’s earlier economic successes, but simultaneously prepared the public for the DLP’s “downplaying” of economic questions, while offering the promise of strong social measures. The post-election reality of both economic failure and social reversal has confirmed the slogan as mere propagandist fiction.
More recently, the DLP has adopted a stance of silence or the habit of giving good news in the face of economic of failure. The refusal of the Central Bank governor to engage the media openly and the Minister of Finance’s end-of-year upbeat statement in avoidance of a true debate on the economy, are examples of these tendencies.
Currently, too, the opportunistic defenders of the status quo, comfortable with human suffering, have been attacking those who speak candidly as unpatriotic prophets of doom.
The challenge for the Government, however, is that it is impossible to permanently substitute fiction for fact. Put differently, “you can’t fool all the people all the time”. There is something known as the dialectic of truth, in which hard cold facts always negate the “social veil” of fiction. The emperor is naked, whether or not we wish to delude ourselves that his pale and wrinkled, unattractive physique is fine silk.
Thus, despite the dismissive claim by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart that the perspectives of the credit rating agencies are mere opinions fit only for the trash can, the decision by Sagicor to relocate a significant part of its business to another domicile, as a result of the impact of Barbados’ negative credit rating on Sagicor itself, is proof that fact is stronger than fiction.
The lesson for the Government is that it is impossible to govern by myth and propaganda alone. Its tendency to give a partisan, election-focused response to any “negative” development has detracted away from the art of genuine good government.
There comes a point, however, when the likelihood of existential collapse should force genuine patriots to fearlessly inform the emperor of his nakedness.
Unless the Government resolves to focus less on sounding good, and engages the country in a genuine dialogue, then the slide will continue. The winning of a new political mandate based on an honest, fiction-free national dialogue may also be an essential requirement in achieving such an objective.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com.