On March 23, 2012, I received a telephone call from my mother who informed me that the postman had just delivered a letter addressed to me from Parliament. I could not imagine why Parliament would be sending me mail. At first, I thought that it could have been my invitation to the joint sitting of Parliament, for the recent royal visit, that had been lost in the mail.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the envelope to find two pieces of correspondence: one of which was an invitation to a meeting of the St. Thomas Branch of the Barbados Labour Party scheduled for April 15, 2012. I was surprised and disappointed all rolled into one. Firstly, I have not attended nor have I been invited to a branch meeting since 2002, and I have no intention of attending one now or in the foreseeable future. So I really don’t understand why they would even consider sending me an invitation in an “On Service” envelope to boot. I could only surmise that they wanted me to share it with the readers on Barbados Underground since this is now the medium that I use to complain about what I believe to be wrong doing.
As far as I am aware, a public officer who sends out his personal mail using the free service provided to Government institutions would be committing an offence. Why should parliamentarians use the free mail service, provided to Government and its institutions, to send out what is essentially their party’s mail? Is this a case of one law for the Medes and another for the Persians?
In a more mature democracy the Member of Parliament concerned would be called upon, at the very least, to explain such a transgression or even pay for the service that was used. I wonder how widespread is this practice, and how much revenue the Post Office would have lost.
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