BLP FOUND IN THE BALANCE AND FOUND WANTING

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Anytime you talk politics in Barbados, the question immediately turns to the issue of leadership. And it is almost always about David Thompson, as in: But can he really lead the country?

This question always shows up in the polls. While both major parties are running neck-and-neck, they say, Owen Arthur’s image as a leader outstrips Thompson’s by two-to-one, if I remember correctly.

This is of course being used as a put-down for the current Opposition leader, and the Bees have made the issue the centre piece of their campaign, believing that the more they remind voters of Arthur’s supposedly commanding margin in the leadership category that people will flock to the Bees once more.

Somehow the thousands who assembled at Oistins to meet the DLP candidates didn’t get the message.

You see, I look at it a different way, and because I fall asleep trying to analyse political polls, of course my analysis will be faulty. But I figure that if the Dems can be running an even race with the Bees despite the perception that they have a weak leader, can you imagine how they would perform if they were perceived to have a strong one?

All of which informs my feeble mind that putting the leadership question at the top of the agenda may not working for the Bees. Thompson seems, moreover, to have learned how to respond to it effectively: By remaining low key and not appearing defensive about the “poor leadership” accusations, he is allowing a sort of “underdog” image to work to his advantage.

Instead, he is promoting his team,  which belies the rule-by-division image of Thompson which the Bees are spending a lot of money on in their campaign (e.g. the full page ad quoting Freundel Stuart in last Thursday’s Nation).
And instead of showing a large group of candidates in their ads, the Dems are showing collections of four (for education, agriculture and so on) to emphasise what it sees as the depth of professional experience and knowledge in specific areas among its candidates.

This also seems effective to me, as it quietly counteracts the “leadership-by-division” image which the Bees are trying to imprint on the Dems. I hope it works because our democracy is not, to my mind, being served by any campaign which says essentially that there is really no contest because of such poor leadership on the other side. Then why have an election, I wonder? Let’s just declare a one-party state right away and be done with it.

I’ve said it before, and don’t mind saying it again, that the Dems have as talented and well-versed a collection of candidates as do the Bees, in terms of education, experience, willingness to serve, dedication to people and so forth. The Dems and Bees are two parties whose candidates are so well matched, and which differ so little in overall philosophy that they are interchangeable. Why, even their former leader can fly from his roost to a safe berth at the top of the other party.

And just for the record, let me say I also believe that David Thompson is capable of running the country as prime minister.

If the leadership question is fairly put on the table, however, it should also be asked: How good a leader has Owen Arthur been? Because some poll says it’s two-to-one over Thompson means nothing to me, as I am here talking about my own perception, whether you agree with me or not (it’s a little thing called freedom of expression, and more people should try it.)

Owen Arthur is not the leader he started out as being when he first came to office. He is missing in action far too often. A couple of years ago, the letters M.I.A. would certainly have been apt for this condition, but now they seem to have changed to C.L.Y.D.E.

Arthur seems to rule by fiat, and has done too many policy reverses without explaining his reasoning to the country for me to be comfortable with calling him a great leader. His arrogance in office now seems to permeate almost everything he does, and his decisions seem to make overall sense only when judged by one criteria, which is, what’s good for big business is good for the country.

How else do you account for the demise in service at the QEH, where people are literally dying to be seen, compared to the rise of private emergency rooms? Or how about the quicksand of Edutech, where millions have been spent with little to show for it?

What about the enormous cost overruns on so many projects, from the prison to the highways? We have also seen the government’s unyeilding, hard-headed approach to those insanely stupid flyovers, and its willingness to give unknown and untested companies massive BOLT projects which will tie up our infrastructure in so many contractual knots that we will be paying through our teeth for them long after Arthur has retired? And with no discussion, no give-and-take in debate, no explanations, I can only conclude that we live by arbitrary Arthurian decree. Is that good leadership?

The Arthur government has allowed the bogey man of globalisation to scare citizens into tolerating a concentration of corporate ownership unlike any we have witnessed before on this island, and the main question I have for Thompson is: Will you let it continue, just changing the names of the players? If you win the government and do so, your administration will be no better for Barbados over the long term than the present one.

So far, Thompson has said the opposite. His party is stressing the detoxification of the body politic from the infusion of the many corporate carcinogens it has ingested of late. Will the Dems really take us into public rehab? Will there come a day in Barbados once more when the government accepts that there are things which it must take responsibility for doing because to privatise all the way upstream results in selling us all down the river?

Where do you draw the line? Is it at the hospital bed and the school gate only, or is it in the many other services now provided, sometimes poorly, by the state? Can you manage a hybrid process under which private enterprise plays a role in an overall sector controlled by the state, not only through strong regulatory agencies, but by retaining ownership of key players, like water and transport and roads and prisons?

And what future will Bajans have in their own country if buying a house and a piece of land to put it on are priced outside their means, and if every young couple must get into hock up to their teeth for 30 years in order to buy anything out there?

Yes, the two sides in my view are equal in the quality of their human resources and the opposition has equal potential to the incumbent party’s experience, but how we move forward in the next few years requires, in my view, clear action on those types of issues. And a lot of the answers will call for more consumer discipline and responsibility, because you can’t sustain lower prices if you continue to create more demand than there is supply.
In my view, the leader who can answer these tough questions and show a middle way through the competing interests of average citizens and private corporate interests is the one who will deserve to be the prime minister.

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