“Two Bulls were fighting one another/ The stake, a Heifer, and the mastery/ A Frog looked on, and heaved a sigh,/ What ails you? Asked a croaking brother./ ‘Don’t you see, answered she,/ What the end of this will be?/ The battle over, he who yields,/ driven to exile from the flowery fields./ Losing his lordship of the meadow-grass,/ will come to rule the reeds in our morass,/ and stamp us deep (deeper) into the nether mud,/ For one, then t’ other; ’tis our flesh and blood/ Must pay for Mistress Heifer’s maidenhood (Cahill).” – Jean de La Fontaine, 1621-1695.
AS WE OLD HEADS look on with ages of wisdom, the young Turks pit their copious wits against confirmed but confused, competing giants.
At stake a lifeline for those who have sacrificed and have come to the end of the terminus. After 60, there is nowhere to go, or mountains to climb save the coveted Mistress Heifer’s maidenhood. La Fontaine puts it nicely, as we the members of BARP (the Frog) look in awe and have been looking for quite a while.
Whatever the outcome may be, the elders in our society have been put on notice of fearing the worse in our journey to mortality.
However, all is not lost. The monkey as judge and jury declared, according to the same fellow La Fontaine: ‘You both must pay the fine./ You Wolf for swearing what Fox didn’t do: /You Fox for taking what Wolf says you took.’
The threat of strike action has little to do with the sacking of one or two workers over 60 years of age. The fire has been simmering from the time Government fired the 3 000 workers after a solemn promise not to fire people. The fire has been burning by the huge disappointment of having forgiven the Government in 2013 and given it a break; by winning an election after asking “where to cut”, and then proceeding to chop up.
Still unable to meet self-imposed targets despite sore nipples and onerous taxation, Government offers enticing bonds only to use the stopgap subscription to pay refunds for income taxes, stamping citizens in the meadow mud, etc. The cauldron has been boiling to boiling over.
On the other hand, we the Frog have been looking on with intelligent eyes, grimacing at the regal display of those in charge, and wondering at the bounty of their everyday existence. Yes, the pot has been boiling ere now.
To the union the taunt has been that they have the goal bars wide open and expose paucity of testosterone. Yes, the unions have been on trial and have maintained a simmering pot. Now it is overflowing. Therefore it is not reinstatement of the workers or gratuity payment at stake, it is a quest for the Heifer’s maidenhood. Respect and re-establishment of the feeling of pride for the unions.
But one must acknowledge that brother Bull has measures that can be used if the sledgehammer is called for. He can resort to the Constitution and declare a state of emergency. He can impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew and get all the shooters off the streets. That threat may have been behind the veil of silence.
Of course, such a course of action would be of no benefit to Barbados. Perhaps if in their wisdom Barbadians had appointed the Wild Coot as primus inter pares, he would have made an immediate decision.
He would have said to his trusted industrial minister: “Look, go out there and resolve the matter as they seem to be playing blind man’s bluff. The five or six million dollars cost can be taken from the bond scoop and peace can be restored. We have to find another way to institute the programme of the IMF. We should have followed what that master of tactics Machiavelli said.
“Injuries must be committed all at once so that, being savoured less, they will arouse less resentment. Benefits, on the other hand, should be bestowed little by little so as to be more fully savoured.”
Everybody over 60 in the statutory corporations gone through the eddoes. I tend to follow that man’s advice although it came from the 15th century.
“But Wild Coot, that would not work,” said an old lady to whom I submit my articles. “The real problem is debt. Until we sort that out there will be a continuing battle for the Mistress Heifer’s maidenhood. Wheel and come again. Let the people know that the foreign debt has to be restructured (that would involve skilful negotiation) and the local debt exchanged (and not surreptitiously). Otherwise we spinning top in mud.”
• Harry Russell is a banker.
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