FORMER PRIME MINISTER Owen Arthur, the longest serving member of the House of Assembly, has warned that like the West Indies cricket team, the legislative institution was in grave danger of having put its best days behind it.
Speaking last Sunday at the Milton Lynch Primary School at a meeting of the Barbados Labour Party’s (BLP) Christ Church West Central branch, Arthur, who has represented the constituency of St Peter since 1984, said that having served there with the likes of Errol Barrow, Tom Adams, Sir Henry Forde, Sir Philip Greaves, Sir Branford Taitt, Sir Harold St John and others of that quality, he used to feel thrilled attending the House and being part of magnificent people doing magnificent things on behalf of the people of Barbados.
He recalled that for nearly 100 years some of the greatest minds Barbados produced were called to politics on the strength of intellect, character and personality and lamented that the Budget debate has now been “reduced to gibberish” and instead of being used to advance the country’s best interests, was being directed at attacking university lecturers personally for their views.
Arthur added that Barbados badly needed to set lofty goals for itself at a time when the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) had become a “failed institution” that had turned its back on its philosophical groundings.
The former Finance Minister said that the current Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler wanted to apppear to be cutting expenses but was not doing so.
For example, Government pays the expenses of Barbadian students at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West indies (UWI) and as an obligation that should be shown as an expense. However, the Finance Minister had stopped showing this obligatory expense and was letting UWI borrow from the National insurance Scheme (NIS) to do so, something that was not the university’s obligation.
He questioned what would happen in the coming years when the loan had to be repaid.
Arthur also pointed out that Sinckler had undertaken a number of unspecified “cuts and caps” in expenditure, steps that he had a duty to spell out for the benefit of the public.
Arthur said it was not always necessary to undertake cuts since a minister could be innovative instead, and that the BLP was prepared to show the way in its next manifesto by calling upon its 73-year-old rich legacy of proven intellectual strength. (TS)