We say that Barbados is in “an economic crisis”, but what does that really mean?
The reality is that the people of Barbados are facing an onslaught composed of the following very difficult problems – a punishing and constantly rising high cost of living, increasing unemployment, inordinately high utility and land tax charges, unsustainable rent charges for small business and some households, a structurally defective Government budget with annual recurrent expenditures exceeding annual revenue, increasing vulnerability of homeowners to mortgage foreclosures and small businesses to failures, excessive bank charges and interest rates, a general stagnation in the streams of commerce and trade, and decreasing levels of foreign exchange earnings and investment.
These problems constitute a systematic crisis for the Barbadian society and economy, and require a wartime-type leadership response of new and unorthodox “emergency” measures.
And a good model for the type of leadership response required is provided by the example of legendary United States president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Roosevelt was sworn into office on the March 4, 1933, at the height of the Depression, and immediately launched into an out-of-the-box emergency legislative and executive agenda.
The day after his swearing-in, Roosevelt summoned Congress back to work for a special session, and in the following 100 days passed 15 revolutionary pieces of legislation dealing with such fundamental issues as the crises in banking, agriculture, industry and transportation, and the pervasive human misery caused by record levels of unemployment and homelessness.
It is this type of Rooseveltian “New Deal” thinking and leadership that Barbados (and the rest of the Caribbean) requires now! And it cannot be a narrow, partisan, politics-as-usual effort! On the contrary, what is required is an emergency, across-the-board national mobilisation!
If there were such a broad-based national campaign in Barbados, the contribution of the Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP) would be to urge a three-pronged approach to dealing with the complex of problems outlined above.
We would recommend the establishment of a national comprehensive incomes and prices programme that pulls together not only the Government, trade unions, and employers’ associations but also the banks, commercial landlords, public utility companies, insurance and mortgage companies, and the various professional associations into an institutional framework that permits policy to be discussed, agreed upon and “enforced”.
The second prong would consist of a rationalisation of all Government departments and programmes, and instituting a new management structure in the statutory corporations.
The third prong would be the establishment of a new but temporary governmental institution in the form of a Recession Recovery Corporation which will have a 10-year life span, and will be mandated and resourced to provide critical survival assistance (inclusive of loans bearing nominal interest charges) to people who are in danger of going under because of the recession.
