I firmly believe that it would be a retrograde step if we were to dismantle equal access to education by the re-imposition of tuition fees at the tertiary level. – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, November 14, 2011.
TWO ELEMENTS OF THE 2013 Budget that caught my eye, apart from the blow to temporary and substitute public workers, were the tuition fees for university and the slashing in half of the reverse tax credit.
First, I was shocked that the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), which has for a generation prided itself on its expansion of “free” education, could get a fundamental development concept so wrong even in the face of constrained financial circumstances.
Some, like the Minister of Finance may not agree with the expansionist Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Cave Hill, but it is an undeniable fact that people have always been touted as Barbados’ only natural resource.
Which was why the entire country applauded when the Prime Minister, insisted that tertiary education would remain free across the board and that reintroducing tuition fees would be a step backwards.
“Universal access to tuition-free education was a deliberate piece of social engineering that has delivered handsomely on its investment,” Stuart told the 38th graduation ceremony of the Community College. “It has helped to create a large and vibrant middle class and a relatively prosperous and enlightened citizenry who enjoy a high standard of living.”
He said education had been both an equalizer and a stabilizer in society and insisted that the waiver of tuition fees remained the only fair way to provide equal access to tertiary education for those who met the academic criteria.
That was in November 2011. Fast forward to August 2013, and Stuart is now saying that it was never intended to last forever and joining some in his fractious Cabinet in re-framing this in economic terms.
But even when he invoked Errol Barrow’s intent, he failed, because the core of the concept was never about cost but equal access.
“He said the investment cannot be curtailed until there is evidence that it is no longer necessary . . . ,” Stuart recalled Friday night.
Where is the evidence for the poor and middle class that it is “no longer necessary”?
How can anyone justify such an uncharacteristic volte face by a man who has himself benefited from the education “freeness”?
But it is not the first time that the DLP has attempted to abandon this bedrock principle. In the early 1990s, it had flirted with the notion, and may even have agreed to the move in order to access funds from one of the international development agencies – the same ones which he said have consistently praised Barbados’ model of free education for the extraordinary emphasis on human capital and the contribution it has made to the country’s exemplary progress.
So despite the Prime Minister’s efforts at justifying the reversal of his position, it seems to me that with other avenues of meeting Barbados’ obligations to the university – as outlined in the newly touted Growth and Development Strategy 2013-2020 – having been largely ignored, this decision must have a political rather than economic underpinning.
Some people often say that politics and economics, though sometimes regarded as separate disciplines, are in fact inextricably intertwined.
So while some will want to look at the 2013 Budget purely from the aspect of the policies and programmes others like myself, will want to look at it through a political prism, that is, how will it impact on the voters, those whose support made it possible for the DLP to form the Government six months ago.
If it isn’t, then it ought to be a truism that one unhappy voter is a vote for the Opposition.
If there is one this thing this Government has going for it, it is that it can count itself fortunate that we are mere months into the second term and therefore there might not have been a better time to impose these painful measures on a long-suffering electorate whose voices will now have to wait even longer before they can be heard.
The other element of this callous assault on the poor has been the reduction of the reverse tax credit introduced in 1998 to provide relief for low income earners who could not benefit from income tax concessions. Was this too,a purely economic decision without any consideration of the social and political costs?
And why hit the temps and substitutes whose positions by their very nature are tenuous at best and without which those people are doomed to slide ineluctably into the ranks of the burgeoning unemployed, and even further down into doldrums?
What this Budget means is that we are rushing headlong into the pauperization of the poor.
• Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent. Email albertbrandford@nationews.com