The way some people talk, it is as if they feel that Charles Morris never saw a microphone he did not like or a soapbox he did not want to use or a reporter’s notebook whose pages he did not want to fill.
But whatever people may say of the priest-teacher/teacher-priest, we should not make an easy peace with those who seem to want to make our country a soi disant democracy and a de facto oligarchy.
I say this against the backdrop of a Friday, April 18 DAILY NATION report that Morris, a teacher at Combermere School, confirmed that he had received a letter from the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, “asking him to explain comments he made earlier this year that were critical of the Government”.
The letter referred to a story headlined Morris Chastises Church For Silence Amidst Decay in the DAILY NATION of February 3, 2014.
In that article, Morris was reported as describing the current Democratic Labour Party Government as being the worst Barbados had ever had and saying that it should be removed from power. He also deemed the Government a “disaster”, an “environmental hazard”, a “catastrophe”, a “cancer” and a “threat” and called for non-violent street protests.
The news story also said that Dale Marshall, QC, had responded to the permanent secretary on Morris’ behalf.
Now, the veritable sword of Damocles in these matters is the General Orders/the Public Service Act 2007.
The relevant section of that act (under The Code Of Conduct And Ethics Section 24) forbids Public Service officers from expressing their views in articles to newspapers in Barbados on “questions that can properly be called political or administrative” but allows them to furnish articles on “subjects of general interest”).
And public officers, it also says, shall not make statements to the media or allow themselves to be interviewed on questions of “public policy”, “without the prior approval of the minister concerned”.
Another stricture: they may not “give broadcast talks or engage in any discussion that is being broadcast on any subject that may properly be regarded of a political or administrative nature, without the prior permission of the minister concerned”.
One of my non-sidebars: what specific matter of a policy, political or administrative nature did Morris speak about? Being a catastrophe or a disaster or a cancer? Hmmmm.
What is the goal of snarling a police officer who wants to publicly criticise or analyse the Government’s fogging policy or an insightful (or even an uninsightful) clerical officer in the Ministry of Health who wants to comment negatively on Government’s recent concessions to Sandals?
Yet in the Morris matter, Barbadians seemed acquiescent, with either a “the Government does employ he” or a contemptuous “Wha’ yuh expect? This en no real democracy”. And that was that!
Of the first, Government being Morris’ “employer” was apparently felt enough to allow even a multitude of trespasses against democracy on its part, throwing a blanket of suppression over a whole set of people.
But I also want to know this: are a particular governing party and the state, the true employer of those thousands of public officers, not divisible?
Are the members of Parliament on the governing side really Public Service employers? For instance, is the Minister of Transport and Works the employer of clerical officers in the Ministry of Transport and Works, able to hire or fire them without in so doing acting ultra vires?
Concerning the contempt, I think this Jennifer Pahlka statement is apt: “It is [mere] contempt that keeps this thing [freedom/democracy] that we own and we pay for as something that’s working against us . . . . We’re disempowering ourselves.”
This matter brings to the fore the consequential issue of crafting a more genuine democracy, in which all are free to participate, not just by voting and a chance to say a few words at the occasional town hall meeting. A democracy that holds dear people’s right, except in very special situations, to analyse, criticise or chastise Government.
Who/what gives anybody the right to bar a whole Public Service from publicly entering the area of political and policy conversation? What grand thing is being protected? I can understand restrictions in matters of state secrets and the loyalty of critically placed officers, but not wholesale exclusion.
To cut off public officers from engagement in debate surrounding our governance is to strike a mighty blow at the heart of our democracy for no transcendent pay-off.
I am also concerned about this: you notice that, apart from Marshall on behalf of his client Morris, no lawyer or set of lawyers rose up to slay this roused latter-day Draco? Even though they might have hitherto been silent about this mostly sleeping danger, those who in democratic zeal ought always to be our heroes in waiting did not race to lay low “he” who was now flexing his muscles.
All the same, Mr Morris, if they seek to do anything that you think is an attempt to finger you, see if you can take them to the Caribbean Court of Justice. I am not sure that that body is persuaded that the operatives of the Barbados Government know how to truly respect people’s rights in a modern-day democratic polity.
(I am no lawyer and I usually resolutely avoid presumptuousness, so all I will say is that the Privy Council’s ruling in the Antigua case Elloy de Freitas vs (1) The Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Lands and Housing, (2)The Public Service Commission and (3) The Attorney General made for very interesting reading for this fellow who is deeply concerned about democracy.)
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor.