Barbados Labour Party legacy: through the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) businesses are forced to respond to consumer complaints in a reasonable time; the Public Counsel is mandated to advise and assist with reviews and hearings and in presenting arguments before the FTC, he mediates on behalf of consumers in disputes with businesses and represents consumers free of cost in disputes taken to the Consumer Claims Tribunal.
People have been left disheartened and confused for the past three years by the devastating impact of the collapse of CLICO and British American Insurance Company and the Democratic Labour Party’s (DLP) shameful mismanagement.
These tragedies has adversely affected their quality of life and their future life prospects. Yet, just when they felt that the highly compromised DLP could not bring their spirits any lower, sufferers were dealt perhaps the most vicious blow of all.
It was unbelievable and depressing enough for 35 000 policyholders and investors, their households, families and friends to witness the sorry spectacle of the DLP heap shame on its badly soiled image and reputation by a unanimous, hard-to-accept declaration by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and others that they had not yet read and therefore could not comment on a court-ordered forensic audit report on CLICO by the highly reputable firm of Deloitte Canada.
Meanwhile, the Barbados media had published and the Barbados Labour Party and many others had read and commented on the findings, with regional leaders also having their say.
But while these victims and the rest of Barbados were busy trying to understand and justify the DLP’s solid wall of silence over the worst financial and political disaster to ever engulf this country, they were horrified by Stuart’s admission that he had personally journeyed to Dodds Prisons to visit convicted and imprisoned Cuban drug smuggler Raul Garcia.
Worse yet was hearing Stuart, who clearly did not think that he had an obligation to ensure that he read the Deloitte report, say that he “felt he should go and make contact with him to explain” his situation and how the DLP was trying to deal with the challenges to his future and what they “were hoping for and working towards”. And all because, in Stuart’s opinion, Garcia was in a “unique predicament”.
Dismayed CLICO victims rightly feel that Stuart did not see their prolonged suffering as a “unique predicament” too, requiring him to go out of his way to inform himself of the Deloitte report so as to be able to offer them empathy, sympathy, reassurance and hope, with the DLP striving against “challenges” to provide them with a brighter future as well.
While Barbadians at large share this anger and disgust, they are also trying to recall when a head of government anywhere ever visited a convict in prison for the same reasons as Stuart, thus evoking memories of a Lent long ago when Barabbas was chosen over Jesus.
In contrast to a bewildering Stuart, Opposition Leader Owen Arthur, voicing the BLP’s determination to remedy the CLICO fiasco, believes tax breaks for victims and a debate in Parliament on CLICO would bring about national consensus on a solution to Rescue, Rebuild and Restore.