Submitted by The People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

“Owen Arthur IS a three term prime minister. I think that unless the Barbados electorate were very silly, there must be some very strong reason why a man was elected three times. His term of office also had coincided with prosperity and we are going through hard times. What the present regime can say is that it was not responsible for them, and to that extent that is where Mr. Stuart can be cautious and say, ‘let me take my time and make my statement, it is two years to elections…”

Dr. George Belle on Getting Down to Brasstacks last Sunday on VOB 92.9 FM

While it is NOT very often that the PDC  uses its BU column space to, for whatever reasons, undertake personal criticisms of any persons living here in Barbados or elsewhere, we must state that this is one time when we have got to use this forum to do so, and for two very important fundamental reasons – that the above cited extract is so scandalous that it warrants the full weight of a calculated response to it – and because the author of it needs to be hauled over the coals for his continued attempts at misleading and misinforming many Barbadians with many of his recent utterly odious propagandistic comments.

For, not only are we getting quite sick and tired with many of Dr. Belle’s very unbalanced, very biased, pro-Arthur, pro-BLP utterances, but we are also becoming increasingly uncomfortable and very dissatisfied with certain local media houses which,  though  their right, still continue to pursue him for his very sub-par intellectually bankrupt political analyses on many political goings on in this country. Need we say more!!!

Moreover, that a man whose masterful PHD thesis had a political historical focus on  the 1937 Riots/disturbances in Barbados and beyond, and who himself had the vision to have once had his own party – the Workers Party Of Barbados, and who used to extol the virtues of social justice and equality in the 70s and 80s, could at this juncture be seen by many people in Barbados to be slipping so terribly in properly understanding and articulating views on many far less challenging political issues in Barbados, is completely staggering – very prodigiously staggering – even beyond our little  comprehension.

Really and truly, we thought that some of his earlier comments on the reasons why Arthur was recently installed  as Opposition Leader  (a faction within the BLP looking for the best leader given the possibility of a so-called snap election being called in the air then, and that Arthur would be a unifying leader), were astoundingly shallow, but the above cited excerpt of comments – which serve as a basis for this particular PDC article – are far  far more heinous.

Now pray tell us, what could have entered the fathead of the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, last Sunday on Getting Down To Brass Tacks, at the time when he went on to state, inter alia, that “Arthur IS a three term prime minister … I think that unless the Barbados electorate were very silly, there must be some strong reason why a man was elected three times”? What like hell??

As well, aside from his very conditional pejorative insult towards the Barbadian electorate – which we found very distasteful and depressing to have heard on the 7.30 am VOB news on such a bright Monday morn – his method of fallacious reasoning and the false impressions he sought to give in saying why Arthur was a three term prime minister, were at one and the same time muchly atrocious and backwardist.

First of all, for the PDC to have heard Dr. Belle say that Arthur IS a three term prime minister was jolting to say the least, since we thought that for him to say that – grammatically correctness aside – and for VOB to broadcast it, was a situation whereby they ( Belle and VOB) more than likely sought to convey the impression to listeners that Arthur is still a political heavyweight.  What trash propaganda!!!! The fact though is that Arthur WAS (sic), and –  IS NOT – a three term prime minister.

Furthermore, we must also categorically state for Belle’s information that the Parliamentary Representative for St. Peter is NO longer the political force that he was in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.  No. Now, he is a mere shadow of his one strong political self. So, what caution any political party, any political body has to exercise in dealing with Arthur, since he has returned to the helm of the BLP!!! NONSENSE!!!

Well, still, Dr. Belle must be made aware – if he does not know already – that there are at least five major factors which were present during the said 1990s and the early late 2000s – and which obviously therefore are no longer present now – that helped to make Arthur, the assumed larger than life political force that he was then.

1. In the aftermath of the DLP /IMF/ World Bank led structural and stabilization period in the early 1990s, many political forces in the country had sought to get behind Mr. Arthur and the BLP in helping to, et al, bring greater political confidence in the recovery in a so-called Barbados economy in which thousands of people had lost their jobs, hundreds of businesses were closed down and many homes, cars were possessed by commercial banks.
   In the minds of many people and groups, Arthur, as a charismatic economist, was therefore eminently positioned to take on the mantle of leadership of the country at the time. Actually, Arthur and the BLP went on to win the 1994 elections, but not before the then DLP Government had imploded in the said 1994. So, what Dr. Belle perhaps failed to appreciate was that more than anything else these particular historical times helped substantially to define Arthur – as had slogans like Jobs No 1 was Jobs, the Brightest and the Best, etc. had helped to define him too. So, given that, now, these times would seem to have been like eons gone by, that the so-called recovery (temporary) of the Barbados economy would have also been achieved like long time ago, and that these slogans are totally irrelevant now,  it certainly has meant now that Arthur’s essential political purposes have also ended, given that those times helped to define and elevate him so substantially.
2. He had in his political camp, or at his side, such prominent BLP figures like David Simmons (now Sir David), Henry Forde (now Sir Henry), the late Sir Harold Bernard St. John, Billie Miller (now Dame Billie), Louis Tull (now Sir Louis) Dr. Johnny Cheltenham, and others. Such political professional talents yearned for governmental power and the exercise of it, and by doing what they had to do esp. in the lead up to the recapture of the government in 1994, thus made Owen Arthur look stronger.
3. The so-called politics of inclusion. This title came over a motley state of affairs in which Arthur was the prime beneficiary of the political capital that was derived from the political relationships that were fostered mediated between himself and the likes of people like Mr. David Comissiong, Mr. Trevor Prescod, Mr. David Denny, Mr. Hamilton Lashley, the said Dr. Belle himself, and many other so-called leftists. Such  relationships ( which saw things like Emancipation Day being declared a National Holiday, July 26 being declared a Day of National Significance, the establishment of a Commission for Pan-African Affairs – of which the said Dr. George Belle was a one time Chair person of, the creation of a pantheon of National Heroes, political monies being allocated by the then government to the Pinelands Creative Workshop, Israel Lovell Foundation) made Arthur more free of trenchant political criticisms and opposition on so many occasions, and left the DLP more open to their
   brand of political attacks.
4. At the time of Arthur’s being a political force, the NDP was also around then, and from 1989 up to about 1999 – the latter, the time when its former leader pledged  political electoral support to  the re-election of a BLP Government, it was a source of political governmental strength for Arthur, as he fed off the many of the positive results/benefits of criticisms that the NDP members were making of the then DLP Government in the early 1990s.
5. Arthur derived much political governmental benefit from the open and hidden support that was given to him by many of those who had served within the business and academic classes and trade union community in this country. Persons like the late Sir John Stanley Goddard, Philip Goddard, Sir Allen Fields, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Sir Roy Trotman had supported Arthur very much and, yes, he – as prime minister – had politically governmentally supported them and their interests very much too.

As said above these factors are no longer present at this juncture. Moreso, we are at stage when there is an absolute need for a totally different path model of national development and for having the requisite strategies and policies to underpin such at this time when China is increasingly flexing its political financial muscle, and is at “war” with the US, to a greater extent, and Europe, to a lesser extent, and when Barbados will be made to feel some of the fall out of this “war”; when many of those above mentioned BLP political personalities have retired from active politics; when the so-called politics of inclusion was proved to be nothing more than a money for status game between political brokers, and wherefore  many of those leftists – except for Mr. David Comissiong – have become politically discredited useless; when the BLP is rightly riven by strife and is in shambles; when the NDP has long become defunct; and at a time when the leading the main business, academic and trade union associations have become more insular and parochial, are organizing under different political emphases, and are more taken up with their own divergent focuses not national focuses.

Also, Dr. Belle, in saying what he had to say (above excerpt), had made the very embarrassing, some would say obtuse, error of that of blurting out that Arthur was elected three times. The facts remain that he was NEVER EVER elected three times. For, from the time of being first elected to the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Barbados in 1984, he has been re-elected more than even three times; he has been reelected 6 times – in the general elections of 1986, 1991, 1994, 1999, 2003, and in 2008. Thus, for him to have said that he was elected 3 times is nonsense in every sense of the word.

However, having regard to the context in which Dr. Belle would have said what he had to say ( above excerpt), he seemed to have been trying to mislead reinforce into some might be gullible listeners into thinking, that Barbados does run a kind of presidential election system. But how could that be???  when in truth and in fact the elections that are conducted in Barbados – outside of by-elections- are national constituency elections under the first past the post election method?? How???

It is amazing how he would want again to be so loose in giving so many false impressions about Arthur seeming so presidential, even in how he has helped to get the rid of Mia Mottley as Leaders of the Opposition, and how he unceremoniously fired those two BLP Senators. Perhaps another series of CHAPO polls could do the trick in getting some people to again look up to that old beaten up political fox!!! Think NOT!!!!

Finally, we want to make it clear to as many people as possible that it was absolutely wrong and untenable for the senior UWI lecturer to falsely impress on the minds of many people that Arthur’s terms of office coincided with prosperity, whereas at this time what we are going through right now are hard times. Whilst the latter situation is true for almost every person business in Barbados, the fact is that there was little real prosperity then under Arthur, if one looks at the fact that the cost of living and doing business in the country had been at their highest under Arthur,  that the amount of  THEIVING TAXATION had been at its highest under Arthur 40-45 % of National Income, that the Gross Government Debt had skyrocketed under the said person, that political exploitation by financial means was at its most devastating under this former Minister of Finance – as many local and foreign elites got far more – money wise – out of the average masses and middle classes than ever before in the modern history of this country.

So, what prosperity what, what, as if by Belle’s saying prosperity in the midst of hard times, Arthur could simply re-emerge as a Prime Minister of this  country!!

Down with Dr. George Belle and his propaganda – no longer deserving of the title of master dialectician!!!!