I am not sure how to proffer this advice and, worse still, not sure if it will be accepted but I genuinely feel that former Prime Ministers of Barbados should not go overboard in letting us know how truly modest their achievements are, even if they have much to be modest about. In other words, former Prime Minister Owen Arthur, sells himself very short to our nation when the only time he can make front page is to tell us that he is doing consultancy work that – depending on how you look at it – Barbadians who never graced the Halls of Crumpton Street, Waterford or Ashton Hall, and some who did, have achieved over 20 years ago.
I found a loud chuckle emitting my lips – and it came from the depths of my patriotic Barbadian heart – last Friday and again on Monday when I read the newspapers. My reflection was that when I – who in the eyes of the Barbados Labour Party am ‘nobody from nowhere’ – left Barbados 20 years ago to take up the job as Principal Political Advisor to the Prime Minister and government of Antigua and Barbuda, there were those who sought to revile me. Antigua was then at the top of its economic game, was the leader politically in the OECS and was a thriving nation with a per capita income rivaling my own country. I have subsequently served in that identical capacity to six other Caribbean leaders in six other Caribbean countries, but that too is pooh-paahed by those who see such as nothing; from a lad who grew up in Ellerton, St. George and who attended St. George Secondary School.
Today, however, a little paid pick as Adviser in the Financial Services Unit of Antigua and Barbuda, an economy on its back and a nation mired in political crisis, has energized the Right Honourable Owen Seymour Arthur to the point where he had to let his party faithful know how busy he is, but that he has not forgotten them. One daily newspaper even made news of the appointment a front page lead story. I LMAO (“laughed muh ass off” – to coin a text phrase) when my Cabinet friend in Antigua told me the draft contract for the big Owen Arthur was patterned after that offered little Hartley Henry 20 years ago. Actually, at the risk of sounding immodest, the fringe benefits are not as generous. Yet, the country is to bow down in the year 2010 because its former leader has landed himself a glorified clerical posting in Antigua, answerable to a Permanent Secretary who, incidentally, was my dominoes partner 20 years ago.
Arthur adds, for good measure, that he is advising a respected, but unnamed, international institution on developments in two other Caribbean countries and is therefore “very busy”, but that he is still “willing to move heaven and earth to ensure the BLP wins the next election.” Leaders with no legacy – but big egos – have this tremendous desire not to be forgotten.
Percival J. Patterson was recently called – he did not have to apply in a line-up of consultants – to be CARICOM Ambassador on Haiti. Likewise, the late Sir John Compton – holder of the Order of CARIOM – was called to service by the Heads, not by third or fourth-rank officials in the CARICOM Secretariat, to undertake a serious task for CARICOM. The current Prime Minister of Barbados, David Thompson, while serving as an Opposition Parliamentarian, was again called to serve as Legal Adviser to several governments in the Caribbean on governance, judicial and electoral reform matters. What more can I say?
The late Rt. Excellent Errol Walton Barrow left office in 1976 and lectured at universities across the world. The late Sir Harold St. John demitted office and resumed his illustrious career as a legal luminary. Sir Lloyd Erskine Sandiford, on demitting office, first lectured across the Globe and now serves this country at the highest level in arguably the most progressive business and financial capital in the world. The Tom Adams that I knew would never have reduced himself to pushing paper in another Prime Minister’s office, as a member of his line staff.
So what is this about a former Prime Minister of Barbados sitting down writing application letters and receiving a little part time pick, answerable, I maintain, to a civil servant in another country? This is most demeaning for Barbados, as far as I am concerned. Is there still a sense in our region of the “fitness of things” as Dame Billie Miller would say?
A former Prime Minister of 14 years standing really has no right being humiliated by flitting around CARICOM preparing a check-list of what the OECS has done or has not done to prepare for the CSME and – without precedent – holding Press Conferences in every territory just to let them know he is in town!
As I say to Owen Arthur, frankly, don’t wake me up unless you have something important to say that redounds to the standing of the office you once held, the nation from which you claim citizenship and the line of leaders from whom you should rightly claim some standing.
But there is more! As if to rub salt in a festering political wound, Arthur wants the present Barbados government to stop griping about the past and get on with the job of a recovery plan for our country.
A few months ago, Owen Arthur summoned all of his admirers to Cave Hill Campus to deliver a lecture on his recovery programme for Barbados. It fell flat. It was dismissed by everyone from economists, bloggers, commentators, call-in moderators etc. as cold-soup, warmed over. As a political adviser, I was to advise the Prime Minister why a leader of 14 years standing who said that all he brought to politics was his economic training, failed on that night to establish his ascendancy.
The issue for Owen Arthur is simple: political and economic credibility. Examples of this waning credibility abound every day. For example, I listened intently to the debate in the House recently on the roll-over of the $100 million loan by Duetsche Bank, when Prime Minister David Thompson pointed out that the original loan being refinanced was borrowed by Owen Arthur “for a rainy day.”
Here is Barbados, in the midst of an economic crisis, going through convulsions about whether just to roll over or incur additional debt over a loan that Owen Arthur borrowed as Minister of Finance when he didn’t need it! What a costly, unnecessary mistake for our country and to what end? Just to have record, borrowed, foreign-reserves?
Every time a DLP Cabinet Minister gets up to speak, he has a duty to remind Barbadians that $700 million spent on a prison means $700 million not available for other developmental needs. And that much of the $700 million will be paid outside of Barbados, including the US$400 000 sent annually to a certain bank account.
The amount spent on the ABC Highway – and the remaining portion now to be paid to 3S for work done up to the point when the Prime Minister stopped it – means that those sums are not available for small business development, new schools, a Hospital, Polyclinics or new police stations.
Edutech, Greenland, the NHC building and Gems Project are four more examples of the squandermania and lack of accountability that have severely hampered the new government’s ability to further stimulate our economy and to provide much-needed relief when appropriate.
Arthur may not wish to be reminded of all this…but Barbadians do.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.