SEVERAL ARTICLES AGO, when the debate on the economic challenges facing Barbados was still in its infancy, this column described the condition as being one of a structural crisis. This characterization was meant to highlight the fact that epoch-shifting changes were under way and that as a consequence, the emergence of a qualitatively new social order would be the likely outcome.
Regrettably, a planned follow-up article with suggested recommendations to the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), in its capacity as a ruling party overseeing a structural crisis, was never written. Had this been done, uppermost among the recommendations would have been the necessity for the party to engage in deep introspection on its philosophy and mission, in light of the very strong likelihood that one of the expected casualties of the structural crisis would have been the inherited Barrow vision.
Naively, it was assumed that the philosophy of Barrow would have been such a guiding light to the party, that those who have in the past laid claim to his ideas would have ring-fenced the Barrow vision, particularly from younger neo-liberals less committed to social democracy.
However, the ease with which the central pillar of the Barrow legacy – free tertiary education – has been discarded, is suggestive of a deep intellectual bankruptcy among the leadership of the DLP. Left in its place is a “politics of pretence” since the original ideological compass guiding policy has been cast aside.
This explains why the 2013 general election had been marked so strongly by “false debates”, since due to its failure to philosophically advance Barrow, the DLP was unable to construct a new social-democratic vision for a new era.
A more honest election would have put the Barrow vision under the microscope, allowing the party to test its own self-identification with its founding philosophy, and inviting public scrutiny of the internal shift which was at play. Today, however, following the 2013 Budget which formally ended the Barrow project, the intellectual bankruptcy has deepened.
This is seen in the emergence of a tendency to resort to naked political attacks against anyone with a contrary perspective, since the leadership has not developed a coherent intellectual alternative with sufficient confidence to engage in a genuine battle of ideas.
Further, a crude politicization of all previously independent institutions is under way, with political operatives located in the church, trade unions, the university and the media, content to defend a “party” at the expense of the independent missions which shape their existence.
Finally, effective communication is replaced by dismissiveness and mixed messages, as the ruling group appears ill at ease and unable to identify with its own policies.
However, epoch-shifting transformations always spawn deep introspection. A 50-year post-colonial project cannot be discarded without a thorough ongoing national discourse and hot political contestation.
The politics ahead will likely be the most significant since the 1930s.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs. Email [email protected].
