The brown-red chickens scampering around the impeccable lawns of Ilaro Court, every “brrk, brroock, broock, brk-ooock” sounding to me like a confused Greek chorus (“Are we on? What’s my note? Where we going? Do I look okay?”), may have provided a bit of comic relief, but could not add enough levity to completely lift the tension in the air.
After all, this was the Prime Minister meeting with the Press – a subject, verb and object that have very rarely gone together since the start of the Freundel Stuart administration.
Some journalists did not attend, and others like me had to think twice about doing so after being essentially put in Coventry for so many years. Why should we now go to hear what he had to say?
Of course, with a general election now quietly starting to loom on the political horizon, I assumed that this was the reason why the PM had overcome his preference to not meet the Press. But at the start of his question-taking, he replied to Kaymar Jordan’s forthright query on this by saying, more or less, “Elections? What elections? You know, I haven’t even thought about them! I’m just trying to get Barbados right!”
And so, in the big tent on the lawn, with his lengthy responses to journalists and editors embellished from time to time by the red-brown chicken chorus, Freundel Stuart introduced himself as Prime Minister to the press corps of Barbados.
It was over five years in coming. It reminded me of the last line in Casablanca: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
In fact, it seemed that the Prime Minister surprised himself by how much he enjoyed this, you know, communication process. Reminded me of my grandchildren going into the sea for the first time. You just couldn’t get them to come out. They were, like, “What? Who invented sea?”
So what was originally expected to be a rather short affair went on until sometime after four. Freundel Stuart introduced himself as Prime Minister by thoughtfully responding to (I wouldn’t stretch it by saying “answering”) the questions posed, and I would say the press gave him a lot of leeway and did not go in too much for those pointed follow-ups that might have put him on the spot.
Someone complained to me about this afterwards but I could only tell them how I approached it. First, when you accept the hospitality (read: food) of the person giving the press conference, you are also accepting that this is not a straight no-holds barred affair but at least partly a social function. It is more so when you go to the person’s home. Ilaro Court is not the Cabinet room.
My commitment to journalism does not override the things my mother taught me about being polite (and everybody knows how polite I can be).
The second thing is that if somebody invited you to hear a parrot that hadn’t said a word for years actually start to speak, would you interrupt? The phenomenon of the sitting Prime Minister holding his first direct press conference in years meant this was different. Now, it will not be in Stuart’s interest to leave it at that if his goal is to develop his communication skills in light of, well, the elections coming up.
You already have Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley all over Twitter and Facebook, and probably the rest of social media too. She has become a master of social media and has created a sort of big sister persona that often is not directly on political issues. This has done more to soften her image and make people think they know her than a thousand marches and loud political platform speeches. There will be time enough for the latter.
Stuart, meantime, has cultivated the image of the unperturbed father figure running the country with discretion from behind a thick veil of privacy. I believe this worked for him for a few years – much longer than I would have thought – but with the economy only picking up a bit in recent times, and with so much debt and other day-to-day problems causing hardship, his absence from direct contact with the press has, I believe, harmed him.
So coming back out and getting a honeymoon press conference is one thing, but whether Stuart is really willing to engage with journalists in the coming months when they will not just be asking the one question each, but demanding follow-ups and exposing weaknesses in his policies, is quite another thing.
Personally, I think he can do it, as long as he is willing to speak to the issues and not get into anything else with the press. His record as Prime Minister, in terms of achievements, is severely wanting of success, and his long thoughtful answers at his maiden press conference left the impression with me that I was listening to a great mind analysing our problems but not a chief executive offering specific plans to deal with any of them.
I also found him to give very little time to the economy and the urgent policy mix he might think is needed to move forward. This prime minister seems to outsource his economic policy, which is a shame.
But, lest you think I have come to bury Caesar – not praise him – let me end with this observation: If Freundel Stuart can overcome his preference for remaining aloof and “above the fray” and realise that this stance may now be more of a liability than an asset, he stands to profit immensely.
As Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”