Congratulations on the passage of the Health Reform Bill. I am impressed and truly inspired by your vision, conviction and determination!
Many political observers in Barbados have come to compare and twin the politics of Washington to that of Barbados. They liken the Democrats in Washington to the governing Democratic Labour Party and the Republicans on Capitol Hill to the current leadership of the Barbados Labour Party.
Sir, in relation to your recent experience with the health care issue, we have an almost identical scenario existing here in Barbados, where absolutely nothing the government does is supported by the opposition.
I can well understand your frustration at having to fight so hard to effect positive and meaningful change. But that, I suppose, is the nature of politics in 2010. The Health Reform Bill, as I understand it, would bring both immediate as well as long term benefits to millions of Americans.
Straight off the bat, health insurers would be required to let young people stay on their parents’ policy up to their 27th birthday. Also, insurers would be barred from denying coverage to kids with pre-existing health conditions, and tax credits, to the tune of 35 percent of premiums, would start to flow to businesses with fewer than 50 employees to enable them to take out and maintain policies.
Mr. President, it is hard to consider how anyone, voted for by beneficiaries of these changes, could oppose them. Yet, we know that every single Republican, all 212 of those who voted, gave the thumbs down to this measure. This is almost as ridiculous, Mr. President, as our Leader of the Opposition here in Barbados persistently opposing free bus fares for school children. Can you imagine that two thirds of the Barbados Labour Party’s Parliamentary team represents rural constituencies, where many children take two buses to school, and these guys violently opposed the abolition of bus fares for school children?
I know how you must feel, Mr. President, because here in Barbados we also had a situation where the opposition opposed holiday camps for school children, constituency councils that would empower ordinary Barbadians and even more recent, the appointment of a Parliamentary Secretary to oversee the day to day operations of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Imagine you have a situation in Barbados where over the last five years, it became commonplace for ordinary Barbadians to spend as much as 24 hours at the main, general hospital waiting to see a doctor. Also, where there were persistent reports of less than flattering experiences at the hospital by patients, staff and visitors alike.
Your counterpart, Prime Minister David Thompson, determined that in addition to having an energetic and competent minister of health that he would reinforce the oversight of government, by putting in a Parliamentary Secretary who has developed a reputation for getting things done. Do you know, Mr. President, the opposition in Barbados opposed that as well?
And it gets even worse! We have a serious water problem in Barbados. There are residential communities that have had to put expansion on hold, as a result of a shortage of or inaccessibility to water. Eighty per cent of callers on the call-in programmes complain of nightmares in respect of the Barbados Water Authority. The situation called for urgent and meaningful action. The Prime Minister acted. He appointed one of his then ministers to the position of Executive Chairman of the BWA in an effort to get ageless issues addressed and resolved. The number one problem at BWA is said to be human resource and industrial relations driven. Arni Walters is one of the foremost experts on HR and IR issues in Barbados. Do you know, Mr. President, that Mia Mottley and the opposition opposed that move as well?
So this opposing for the sake of opposing is not unique to Washington, my friend, we encounter the same nonsense in Barbados on a daily basis.
We have school children doing as they like both on and off the school compound. The Prime Minister and Minister of Education are at their wits end to find a solution to this problem. Do you think the Leader of the Opposition or the former Prime Minister has said a word in support of the government’s effort to check and stamp out incidents of antisocial behavior among school children? No! Not a word! Their obsession is with talking arithmetic.
Everything that flows from their mouths is GDP, deficit and foreign reserves related. No one is saying that these are not important, but, as the Prime Minister has said repeatedly, Barbados is more than an economy. It is a society. Yet, the Leader of the Opposition, and presumably Prime Minister-in-Waiting, cannot find a single social issue to associate with or to champion.
Indeed, she and her predecessor attended and spoke at their first party meeting in months (I am going to give you the joke about that another time) and when they discovered that the economic techno-babble was not resonating with even their supporters, do you know what they ended up talking about? Mr. President, you won’t believe it. Their time was spent calling for a member of the cabinet to be fired over some incident they say took place in the Members Room of Parliament.
I am waiting, Mr. President, to see where they and their mouthpiece newspaper are going to take this issue, because I recall hearing of a gun being fired among a gathering of BLP government ministers a few years ago. It was never denied or confirmed whether a then representative for a rural constituency received a gunshot wound, but I can tell you no one messed with the then representative for a very urban constituency thereafter. Interestingly, that incident was never reported in the newspaper.
Furthermore, Mr. President, have you ever heard of a pigtail bucket? Well legend has it that a senior Member of the current Barbados Parliament beat his father to a pulp with a pig tail bucket and when he was confronted with the tale of this in the Parliament of Barbados, a fight broke out with a now deceased former member, and an ex-cricketing great was struck by a flying chair thrown by that senior member. A former deputy Speaker also fractured a colleague minister’s nose with a cuff, right there in Parliament yard.
So I am waiting patiently to see how the Barbados Labour Party and its newspaper arm treat this issue of a recent fracas in Parliament, because, while I do not condone such; perpetrated by friend or foe, I will not sit silent and permit the impression to be given that such is unprecedented.
Mr. President, I agree with you. Such sanctimonious grandstanding is an abomination!
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