To get information, most journalists have to wait for documents to “fall off the back of a truck”, or in our new cyberspace environment, to show up on websites whose operators are often anonymous.
So you can imagine the thrill you would naturally feel when a Government minister promises to send you some very hard-to-obtain information, and tells the whole world that he will do this, presumably so that they can make sure he doesn’t forget.
Yes, my friends, I say this because no doubt you read in last Monday’s DAILY NATION that Minister of Housing Michael Lashley made such a pledge to me while speaking at a Democratic Labour Party (DLP) St James North constituency branch meeting the day before.
Now, perhaps his minions are burning the midnight oil putting together what, given Mr Lashley’s assertions at the meeting, is likely to be a very long list of the present administration’s accomplishments. Or perhaps the list is so short that they are too embarrassed to send it.
I wouldn’t know, as it hasn’t reached me yet (as of 11 p.m. Wednesday, May 23).
The minister made this pledge as he “took issue”, according to the Monday, May 21 DAILY NATION (Back Page), with your humble commentator “for reportedly describing the Government as a ‘do-little administration’ ”.
So having made Mr Lashley’s shortlist, I await his hopefully longer one. Meanwhile, I must tell you, it isn’t looking too good.
Mr Lashley told the meeting that the Do-Little Administration had scored high in health care and housing.
I, too, have heard more than one comment that the QEH has improved a lot lately. Congrats to all of the people at QEH who are making it better, and to Minister of Health Donville Inniss, because he is the first one we would criticize were the comments the other way round.
On housing, Mr Lashley should be commended for pushing as hard as he can to provide affordable housing solutions. He deserves kudos for what he and the administration have achieved to date on that score.
“Kudos” is a word borrowed from the Greek one meaning “glory”. Oh, yes, Greece. Sorry to bring it up, Mr Lashley. You see, the people who invented that word have also lately done something else extremely important that you should know about.
In their recent elections, they denied the parliamentary majority to their former ruling, austerity-only political parties, and voted in more politicians who want austerity measures to be balanced by ones which stimulate growth. Now they have to vote all over again because nobody can form a government.
Well, you may say, “Hoyos, you can go to France”, and I would say “Mais oui!” which means “But, of course!” For there I would find a new prime minister in office with the somewhat confusing name of Hollande, who just told Angela Merkel and the EU “exactement” the same thing.
But the Do-Little Administration continues to keep the suffering constituents of St James North and all the other constituencies of this nation under the jackboot of austerity, with nearly $1/4 billion in new taxes sucked out of their pockets last year alone, on top of all the other tax increases they had to endure in the first three years of the Thompson-Stuart governance.
Mr Freundel Stuart himself publicly announces that he does not read reports, be it the forensic report into CLICO or the newspaper report on the latest Wickham poll, on which he, however, sounded remarkably well briefed.
Mr Lashley was also reported as asking me to “look at the Barbados Labour Party in relation to Gems, [builder Al] Barrack, the Prisons, the cost overruns, the highway, the Silver Sands bath and Greenland”.
If I understand Mr Lashley correctly, he wants me to look at those things and compare them to the performance of this Government over the last four years. Presumably, having doing so, I would then stop referring to the present Government as the Do-Little Administration. I don’t know why this bothers him so much.
If I were the present Government, I wouldn’t invite comparison between the BLP’s and DLP’s approaches to Al Barrack’s court-ordered award until I had cut the cheque.
I have been “looking at” GEMs since the late 1990s, and every article has directly or indirectly been critical of how the Bees handled that affair. To the DLP’s credit, they finally were able to lease out two of the hotels to a local business group with an excellent track record for turning companies around.
As for the rest of the things mentioned by Mr Lashley, it surprises me that a minister of Government just wants to horse-trade his Government’s perceived successes with another’s perceived failures. That does not make for a level playing field in my book.
Worse, it suggests a lack of coherence by the administration on the way forward. The Government Mr Lashley serves has spent the last four years – and especially the last 18 months – taxing the citizens so deeply that the economy has been unable to meet even the modest growth levels set by itself.
All it has done is take more money out of people’s pockets to pay its bills while doing precious little or nothing to help the economy start growing again.
It occurs to me, to my chagrin, that perhaps Mr Lashley never planned to send me a list at all, hoping instead that by “naming me” in front of the folks at the DLP St James North constituency branch meeting he would also succeed in “shaming me”, thereby getting me to shut up. Or maybe start referring to his Government as the Do-Nuff Administration.
If so, I wonder how that plan has worked out for him so far.
