Say what now! Dr David Estwick has told his Cabinet colleagues that they are to blame for the current economic crisis? Unbelievable! Am I alone or do others remember the David Estwick who was on the campaign trail in the last election? Do you remember David Estwick bringing graphs and statistics to show that the state of the economy was not the fault of the DLP government?
Do you remember the “pitbull” in Parliament stoutly defending the government’s policies? Estwick’s defence of his party’s policies used to be one of the highlights of the parliamentary debate. Now all of sudden, we are hearing that those policies which are not second-term policies by the way but part of the party’s first-year wave of reforms were all wrong.
How are we as the public supposed to understand this roundabout turn?
I completely understand standing on principle; no one can fault a man for saying enough is enough. Luckily for us, the public, we get to watch the entire display. I am quiet intrigued by the ball-by-ball play of every recent conversation Dr David Estwick is having with his Cabinet colleagues.
It would seem that the Nation newspaper has become the proverbial fly on the wall where these conversations are concerned. At the same time, I believe that anyone who has been keeping a keen eye on the internal politics of the DLP would not be surprised by the recent turn of events. There has been an ongoing lack of Cabinet discipline in the DLP for some time now as Cabinet ministers are repeatedly at odds with each other’s pronouncements.
This is not too surprising when one considers the flip-flop approach of the Prime Minister especially when it comes to pronouncements made by his Minister of Finance. Sometimes you have to wonder if there is some secret inner door in the Cabinet room, which allows them to publicly go in and then disperse secretly. There has consistently been a lack of unity of thought.
This also once again highlights the complete lack of political acumen in the party. Estwick should have been neutralised a long time ago. He was clearly too silent and disaffected and at some point in time someone should have recognised that the volcano would have erupted. As usual, the party is in reaction mode, continually in crisis and clearly heading for some kind of implosion.
The position is untenable. I do not see the way back, either Estwick will completely lose credibility with the public (if there remains any) and have to recant his position and or he will have to go with all of the implications of what that entails for the DLP and the government.
Moreover, for the Prime Minister to allow this ongoing public dissent by one of his Ministers opens the door for a complete loss of Cabinet control. What stops any other minister from throwing a tantrum tomorrow in an effort to hold his colleagues to ransom?
Outside of the sheer political considerations themselves, questions have to be asked about the soundness of the proposals made by Dr Estwick and why they are being presented so late in the game.
Why were his Cabinet colleagues not willing to listen before? What signal are we to pick up from this? Who are these economists who are working with him but did not feel that they could have lent their expertise to the government as a whole?
Admittedly, I have not been able to read the full text of the proposals which have been outlined by Dr Estwick and therefore cannot pronounce on their validity. However, I do believe that the there are some inherent flaws in an approach which calls for all of one’s national debt to be in the hands of a single lender. At the same, I do recognize that one of our major problems is that we are unable to generate a credible alternative agenda for change.
This government has been adamant that the present course is the only way and there has been a dearth of credible apolitical positions presenting a comprehensive proposal to suggest otherwise.
This demonstrates the intolerance of our political system for anything outside of the status quo and for any idea which even smells like it could be different or a tad bit innovative.
If nothing else, perhaps the Estwick’s saga can highlight the importance of engaging alternative positions and open up the debate outside of the in-tune choir we have come to accept.
So we await the outcome which seems to lie only within the political realm. We are a forgiving and dare I say a fickle public complacent with our five-year turnkey democracy.
We are completely cowed by the bogeyman of public dissent (this is not the same thing as public disorder) and therefore feel that we have no power to press for the necessary accountability which we deserve. We also have a government with not even an ounce of understanding of what it means to be public servants and therefore will be more motivated by political survival than any sense of moral accountability to the public.
The worst-case scenario for me – is that it will all wash over and become just another moment in our politics.
Shantal Munro-Knight is a development specialist and executive coordinator at the Caribbean Policy Development Centre.
