Will the Afra Raymond of Barbados please stand up?
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Trinidad, with its integrity legislation is a peering into the future of Barbados as a Capitalist Democracy. Afra Ramond and David Walker therefore are important to Barbadians, but for an obtuse reason:- they are proving that a campaign like theirs, one that represents a sustained effort at exposing “corruption” in public financing and the legislation that is developed to hide it, DOES NOT WORK!.
Truth is, the approach is NOT designed to work since it ignores two basic realities of the economic model that we were born into, a model that has been around in its present form for centuries.
1. Private Enterprise, or “Free” Enterprise or Business (a rose by any other name) is an activity that exits for ONE solitary purpose, to EXPLOIT people (and the environment where available) for profit.
2. Political Parties represent an extension of the Private Enterprise model, they are businesses.
Again, this is a Capitalist Democracy and it has brought material wealth to millions
Afra Raymond completely refuses to accept this. Everyone that I know who was or is actively involved in politics is sufficiently educated and intelligent enough to know this, but Raymond prefers to remain a romantic.
Romanticism, like alcoholism is not easily cured, but the first step to healing is the acknowledgment of being stricken.
Capitalism is an ancient beast that survives to this day through deception … NOT corruption. Accepting the realities as there are is a first step, and having the agents involved in the process exposed and registered for what they really are is the second.
Move the discourse away from accusations and into the realm of formalizing, that way the population (the majority of which is purposely dumbed) would have a clearer picture of the beast that they have been feeding from time immemorial, and then and only then, can a true demand for change can be engineered.
So far for the day, many Barbadians are not supportive of this DLP government BCCI conspiracy against those particular outdoor business people of this country and by extension those of the great masses of people of this country.
Many people have vowed to support any lawful responses of these outdoor business people and their supporters against this inhuman and retrograde DLP government and its diabolical cohorts, Lalu Vaswani and the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Remove the Damned DLP and the Blasted BLP!!
PDC
@Baffy
Please expand how meaningful change can be initiated. Please expand!
What is important is to accept the kind of beast that you are dealing with and map it out. Support ALL calls for the legitimizing of these institutions. Have them registered and with a Government financed body to act as an overarching authority. This alone will take some doing, but focus on this first. For this to happen, Political Parties as we know it will cease to exist, but that is the real goal now isn’t it ..?
@Baffy
In effect you are asking a beast (by your definition) to shoot itself. In our so called democracy why would any government born from a political party seek to regulate itself?
Well David you are reading from the same page as me. This approach, as improbable as it may seem, is more doable than the Raymond approach which has been tragically pursued by others since time immemorial. The reason why it is doable is because it is salable to a population.
Today the politician is required to be no more honest as he is monogamous. What is required is that he is effective (delivers results), at the micro or macro level. So selling corruption to a population is mundane and will frustrate any who continues to pursue it. But selling a population on the need to regularize the status of these people, after exposing the ghost nature of the political institutions CAN BE DONE. The right people, like Raymond and Walker, have to get on board.
This is Raymond’s response to me
“Hello BAFBFP, whoever you really are…
The success of otherwise of the campaigns you are criticising could only be measured by comparing the results thus far against the intended targets. One of my intended targets is the same objective you name as your second step – “…having the agents involved in the process exposed and registered for what they really are…” I have had some success in doing that and this blogspot is one of the spaces showing those results.
I agree with you that many of our leading Political Parties in the Caribbean are really businesses with no explicit ideology – which is a point I made in ‘Change, not Exchange: the Two Tendencies‘ – see http://wp.me/pBrZN-fu – “…That pattern of brusque dismissals and crude exchange is highly questionable, given that both parties have fundamentally similar economic and social policies. It seems to me that the dismissals are motivated more by by vengeance and a desire to control the vacated jobs, than by any actual difference in ideology or approach…”
Thank you for joining-in…
Afra”
I only wish for him to drop the corruption charges thingy and move more forcebly towards the regularising direction
Hello BAFBFP, whoever you really are…
The success of otherwise of the campaigns you are criticising could only be measured by comparing the results thus far against the intended targets. One of my intended targets is the same objective you name as your second step – “…having the agents involved in the process exposed and registered for what they really are…” I have had some success in doing that and my blogspot – http://www.afraraymond.com – is one of the spaces showing those results.
I agree with you that many of our leading Political Parties in the Caribbean are really businesses with no explicit ideology – which is a point I made in ‘Change, not Exchange: the Two Tendencies‘ – see http://wp.me/pBrZN-fu – “…That pattern of brusque dismissals and crude exchange is highly questionable, given that both parties have fundamentally similar economic and social policies. It seems to me that the dismissals are motivated more by by vengeance and a desire to control the vacated jobs, than by any actual difference in ideology or approach…”
Thank you for joining-in…
Afra
@ BAFBFP
So what you really want is a National Supervisory Committee with full constitutional powers to manage GOVERNANCE and AUDIT, with a seperate and distinct administrative /management body responsible for day to day operations of national business….?
Man we discussed this long ago….it is only awaiting You, Caswell and David (BU) readiness….
The Joint Consultative Council for the Construction Industry (T&T) has detailed proposals and other material on these issues here – http://www.jcc.org.tt/policy.htm
Yes BT and the Committee will have a seat reserved for a member of the Gay and Lesbian community … Comprende ..?
Afra what BT is on about here is an alternative to First Past the Post electoral politics, a radical shift that would make the actions of those with the authority to develop and implement public policy more in line with the requirements of the minority interests that are represented on the Committee.
He agrees that in order to win a discussion that criticizes the status quo it is best to have an alternative available. He claims to have got there first. I always bow to my elders …! 🙂
A man arrested for selling ackees and sugar apples etc. I could eat a sugar apple now. If I knew the man was in town selling, I would have gone and buy some . Sounds like the slave laws still in existence
Talking about inciting rebellion ? This DLP
government got people real phucking vex and there is no telling what will happen .
@ BAFBFP
Did we not agree that positions would be reserved for all major interest groups in the process? Based on representation here on BU Bushie is proposing that three (3) seats be reserved for your pals. 🙂
BTW
Bushie is not claiming any rights to the plan. Just sharing ideas together on BU.
Feel free to take it and run….
Just flipped through the JCC document and it is clear that Afra’s experience with bidding for public contracts is sound. Again, the delivery of contracts (how and where the public’s purse is spent) is the primary service that the Political Party business entity offers to its clients (investors/financiers) …
Bush Tea
Wah pals you talkin ’bout .. All an wunna is my pal. HA HA HA
@ Baffy
All right den!……Pal!
The problem with Afra’s quest is that he is fighting a heroic, but loosing battle. It is like a fellow diving into the sea and seeking to bring about changes in the way that sharks operate.
There is an endemic system of corruption in most societies that runs all the way down to the grassroots levels. Calling for honesty and transparency at the upper levels without addressing the overall systemic flaw is self deceptive.
Technically there is no more moral right to expectation that a Prime Minister should be honest, than there is that a temporary clerk should be….
Our general approach has been, that once someone is elevated above a certain level, they owe us a right to honesty and transparency…..even after having use deceit, dishonesty and deception in reaching that high level.
Indeed, we generally accept that it REQUIRES dishonesty to achieve such high levels of responsibility (politicians are EXPECTED to be liars, cheats, back-stabbers and promise breakers), but that once elected, these persons will suddenly adopt this new strategy of honesty, in which they have no previous experience, and which would have guaranteed them failure in even reaching where they have….
Fundamentally flawed.
People ALWAYS get exactly the government that they deserve. In order to benefit from honest, competent, transparent government – a people must cultivate those characteristics from the grassroots up….
What Afra is trying to do in Trinidad is like trying to put out a house fire with a fly swatter…. LOL.. but it is quite uncomfortable for the flies that pass his way ….
Bush
Of course we are saying the same things except one. Many of us do NOT get the Government we deserve … or are we NOT people too …?!
Trust Bushie Baffy, you DESERVE Freundy – the same as ac does, Caswell does, and the same as Bushie does….We sit on our behinds and complain about the incompetent jokers doing shiite and write nuff stuff on BU….
What the hell do you deserve…?
Shiite man, Bushie offered the BUP option last election which would have at least given the Bajan brass bowls the OPTION of choosing a sensible SYSTEM of gevernance along the lines that you have been arguing…. What Happened….?!?
Man you DESERVE exactly what we have…and /or the alternatives like Mia or PDC…….
Everything in its time Bushie
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