Source: BU Family member Adrian Hinds
We have NEVER published a speech on BU since our start-up. We have always tried to expressed our opinions on the many issues affecting our PEOPLE. However we have decided to make an exception in the case of the speech delivered by Attorney General Freundel Stuart in the just concluded Budget Debate. This is a speech which has come from a DLP politician who was thought by the BLP to not have been fully onboard the DLP train during the last general election. Our recollection is that he uttered some public statements which were very unflattering to then colleague David Thompson.
In light of the foregoing we agree with BU commenters who have been ‘turned-on’ by this contribution by Stuart. Our interest in the speech does not border on any partisan leaning, but more so what it represents. How a deep thinker like Stuart used words to emasculate the former Prime Minister, who not long ago strode the Lower House like a colossus.
The contribution of Attorney General Freundel Stuart to the gelling and molding of a new government will be critical as he takes on the role of elder in the young government. We enjoyed the speech delivered by Attorney General Stuart which was delivered with the flair to which some of us were accustomed from our 70’s parliament. These are troubling economic times, the knowledge that a man of deep thinking like our Attorney General sits in our cabinet is comforting . His demonstrated wisdom will be required.
Here is the speech compliments of the Advocate Newspaper:
I have listened to, with amused interest, to the Honourable Member for St. Peter who has delivered economic and policy statements in this Chamber for the last 14 years and as he spoke I kept asking myself if all that he was saying was true, what it was that the people of Barbados was dissatisfied about in the month of January.
What it was that they were dissatisfied about for the last three/four years in this country if all of these solutions were within his embrace. Are the people of Barbados stupid? Dont they know when they are feeling pain? Dont they know when a government has divorced itself from their interests? Dont they know when the policies of a government are inimical to their ideals? And I am prepared to err with the people of Barbados rather than to get swept along by all that I heard from the Member for St. Peter over the last half of an hour.
The most reassuring part of the Member’s speech was that no private citizen in this country had to fear tonight being abused from the floor of this Chamber. No Civil Servant had to endure today although telephone calls were made over the last few days any threats from the Member for St. Peter and for the very simple reason that he spoke in this Chamber tonight as a naked man, stripped down to the skin, of all of the arrogance and all of the hubris that the people of Barbados had to endure particularly over the last ten years.
He did not even speak in here tonight as a man with any special motivation to see the Democratic Labour Party never rule Barbados again. Even that was missing from the contribution which he made to this debate. And if there is any lesson in all of this it is that we should never forget the source of our power. We should always remember that power comes from the people. It is theirs to give and theirs to withdraw.
So tonight, this very lonely man stood up in this Chamber, can reach out and touch no one in Barbados really, not even anyone on his side of the House, because when I survey, not the wondrous Cross, but the Opposition benches, the Member for St. Michael North has no particular reason to love him since he had to throw a Cabinet position back in his face. He cannot expect the affection of the Honourable Member for St. Thomas since the Member for St. Michael North East has pre-empted that affection.
The Member for St. James North has been treated like a football, abused and insulted by the Member for St. Peter for the last ten years or so and I know whereof I speak; and although the Member for St. James North is perhaps the most rounded and most intelligent politician in the Barbados Labour Party, he has had to take insults and abuse from the Member for St. Peter for a good ten/twelve years and tonight sits in his seat a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. The Member for St. George North, of course, is perhaps the only friend that the Member for St. Peter has on that side and for obvious reasons. Their habits are not dissimilar. Missing from his seat is the Member for St. Andrew.
Now I have to congratulate the Member for St. John because whatever else this Budget did not do, it certainly made the dumb to speak. So the age of miracles is not ceased. The Member for St. Andrew stood up in this Chamber today and made a full speech. But he too has been at the receiving end of the implacable ire and rage and spite in some cases, of the Member for St. Peter, and you know I dont think anybody in Barbados rejoices more than the Member for St. Andrew that the nakedness of the Member for St. Peter is now so cruelly exposed.
The Member for St. Joseph well, he will follow anything. You dont have to bother about him. He will follow anything; but I know this: the Member for St. Michael North East, too, was at the receiving end of no small bit of undermining abuse, backstabbing from the Member for St. Peter. Again I know whereof I speak and the Member for St. Michael North East also knows whereof I speak. Politeness may make her nod her head to say no and I appreciate the politeness, but I know whereof I speak.
So tonight, what we saw in here was the unmasking of power and I hope that all Barbadians looking on, listening to this Debate would have learnt the lesson that he that humbleth himself shall be exalted but he that exalteth himself shall be abased.
Having said that Mr. Speaker, I think it bears reminding the country that the Government responsible for the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals for this year has been in office for 175 days today 175 days. And listening to the speeches coming from the other side, with the exception, of course, of the speech for the Member for St. Michael South East, one got the impression that all of the manifesto pledges of the Democratic Labour Party should have been satisfied in 175 days.
So, as the Member for St. Michael North East ended her 3 hour and 10 minutes speech, as she entered into her peroration perhaps I should withdraw the word ‘peroration’, that word I think is reserved for speeches that are well structured and elegantly delivered. I should say as she entered into her perspiration, we heard how the policemen are not happy and the nurses are not happy and the teachers have been let down because the DLP has not fulfilled the promises it made in its manifesto in 175 days!
We came to office on the 16th day of January 2008. There were just under 30 000 people in Barbados waiting on the National Housing Corporation [NHC] for either a house or a house spot. This Government is being chastised tonight and has been chastised ever since yesterday evening for not providing just under 30 000 houses or house spots to people in Barbados in 175 days!
When we came to office on the 16th of January, even using the figures relied on by us from the other side, there were about 50 000 people in this country trying to find jobs. Every single member on this side of the House knows that when you go to your constituency clinics that is what you hear about jobs or houses or house spots. In 175 days the DLP in Government was supposed to provide 14 or 15 000 jobs.
When we came to office on the 16th January, the current account deficit was to the tune of about $485 million. This Government in 175 days was supposed to wipe out that deficit so that it could attract the praise and kudos of the Opposition. When we came to office, the inflation rate was about 4.4 %. We left office in 1994 with the inflation rate at 0.1%, came back and found it at 4.4% and we were supposed to, in 175 days, wipe out all of that so that the other side of the House could stand up and say how great a Government the Democratic Labour Party was. Can all of this be for real? O judgement thou art fled to brutish beast and men has lost their reason.
But the speech of the Member for St. Michael North East, which was the leading speech delivered on that side of the House, lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes and if I have to confess, I am entitled to an opinion like any other Barbadian, I thought it was a very childish speech and that is a trajectory on which I cannot make contact with the Member for St. Michael North East.
I have always tried my best never to forget how to be childlike but I frown on bringing childishness this far into my adulthood. That is why, with apologies to St. Paul, I have always felt able to quote that famous passage in his Corinthian letter: When I was a child I spake as a child, understood as a child and thought as a child, but now that I am become a man I have put away all childish things.
“That is perhaps the fundamental distinction between the Member for St. Michael North East and myself, because even though she may have become a man, she has not yet put away all childish things.
Now the policy of the Government revolves around two concepts: the concept of family and the concept of social care. You cannot understand what is contained in the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals for 2008 unless you understand and can relate the concept of family and the concept of social care. For the last 14 years we have had to listen to a politics rooted in arid arithmetic that really had very little to do with the hot immediacies of peoples’ everyday lives.
What the DLP has tried and it doesnt even have to try because this has been our policy ever since the inception of the DLP was to restore politics to its human dimension where we can get back to the use of power, not to satisfy abstractions, but to deal with the real concerns of actual men and women.
We start from the position that in any post-colonial society you have to deal with an inheritance, a social contradiction, an economic contradiction, an inheritance of colonialism and in all post-colonial societies, certainly the ones in the Caribbean and it still manifests even in the great United States of America the subject peoples and, in the case of the Caribbean the subject peoples are the majority, the demographic majority in the society is at one and the same time not just a numerical majority but it is also an economic and sociological minority; and the demographic minority is an economic and sociological majority.
That is a fact of life in all post-colonial societies in this region, whether the colonising power was the French, the British, the Spanish or whoever. That is the reality in the Caribbean and in Latin America as well. And public policy therefore has to target the vulnerable wherever the vulnerable can be found.
For the last 14 years we have had a version of economics I dont call it economics. I call it arithmetic which started from the position that as long as you fatten people from the top there would be a spillover and people at the bottom would necessarily get the crumbs from their table the so-called trickle down variable of economics. I believe the liberal economist J.K. Galbraith put it beautifully when he said that trickle down economics is another way of saying that if you want to give the birds more feed you have to give the horse more oats. And that is really what has governed Barbados for the last 14 years.
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