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Only in Barbados: The Minister of Finance’s Happiness and the DLP’s Political Deception is a Sadness for Bajans

By personal choice, I have not written recently on the social, political, or economic factors heavily impacting on Bajans, but I have observed the callous and perhaps reckless approach to governance by the DLP. The DLP regime has targeted the poor, the middle class, and there has been concerted effort by Cabinet to dismantle the…

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George C. Brathwaite
George C. Brathwaite

By personal choice, I have not written recently on the social, political, or economic factors heavily impacting on Bajans, but I have observed the callous and perhaps reckless approach to governance by the DLP. The DLP regime has targeted the poor, the middle class, and there has been concerted effort by Cabinet to dismantle the gains achieved under the BLP. I am concerned, and particularly over the assault on Barbadian workers and their livelihoods. Nonetheless, the latest pronouncements and ensuing policies that have emerged from the DLP’s political machinery and from within central cogs of the Barbados Cabinet demand unfettered commentary. This I owe it to my fellow men and women regardless of their political persuasion.

I begin by stating my ‘critical’ bemusement at the ridiculous phrasing employed by the Minister of Finance, Christopher Sinckler. In his Ministerial Statement delivered to the Parliament of Barbados on Friday, December 13th, 2003, Sinckler said to the Lower House that he was “mindful” that the beleaguered DLP Cabinet had “completed the first three months of implementation” of the ‘restructuring programme’ which he had announced previously in the contentious budget delivered on August 13th, 2013. Sinckler, strikingly claimed that he was “happy to lay, along with this [Ministerial] statement, a report in matrix form, outlining the progress we [the DLP Cabinet and administration] have made to date on the implementation of the measures” announced in the August budget.

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158 responses to “Only in Barbados: The Minister of Finance’s Happiness and the DLP’s Political Deception is a Sadness for Bajans”

  1. Mark Fenty Avatar
    Mark Fenty

    Pish, I thought the number 3000 was quite too large for a country of some 270,000 for a population. Now, would you believe though that the Civil Service in the States of Connecticut, is much smaller than that of Barbados…. A state approximately the size of Jamaica and with a population of some 4 million!

  2. enuff Avatar
    enuff

    @Chaucer
    You bumped your head? Neither politically nor otherwise can the MoF and PM be winning! The Opposition has been proved right, the government wrong and not to be trusted. The Opposition can stay silent as sending home 3000 will decimate the Dems and if there’s privatisation and or devaluation–worse.

  3. CHAUCER Avatar
    CHAUCER

    @Enuff
    You are a political simpleton. It isn’t who right or wrong but winners and losers. The BLP leadership is now on the defensive : Will the BLP mps
    take a personal cut , ask yourself

  4. Crusoe Avatar
    Crusoe

    @ Chaucer…It isn’t who right or wrong but winners and losers. ”
    —–
    Very true, and because of (among other things), ineptness, incompetence and inaction on the part of the current Cabinet, including the PM and MOF, BARBADIANS OF ALL WALKS OF LIFE WILL BE THE LOSERS.

    Expect:
    – more public sector layoffs within six months, or general public sector wage cuts
    – more (quite a mistake to do so, but they have made many already and the idiot MOF has already intimated as much) direct taxes
    – likely devaluation – which may now be almost impossible to avoid, even though if action was implemented as recently as two years ago, it could have been avoided, at least at this time.

    You think things bad with 3000 jobs lost? That is just the beginning.

    Yet, some people are willing to let them off the hook for not doing anything earlier and worse, either having the sheer competence to not know how bad things were getting from ever since or the political intent to not acknowledge that. Either one is unacceptable.

  5. Pish Avatar
    Pish

    I think someone should have told the PM stop looking at Greece and Spain, why we judge our standards on other people’s own is beyond me.

  6. Bajanfuhlife Avatar
    Bajanfuhlife

    @Gabriel
    “All you who try to downplay and cuss OSA morning,noon and night know that he is the one that makes the DLP tremble and quake.He’s solid as a rock.”
    STUPSE! spoken like a true political yardfowl.

    Arthur defeated in 2008 , defeated in 2013 – stop living in a fool’s paradise. The only body that trembling at the sight of Arthur is piss poor Mottley.
    Arthur held a press conference this week and did not even inform her. Mottley is well aware that Arthur is firm in his conviction that she never gets her hands on the highest office in the land. The infighting and disunity in the BLP is raging- court cases and all.

  7. balance Avatar
    balance

    “and this is as a result of the high standard of living inflicted on us mostly by the private sector through goods and services”
    definitely not r Permanent secretary- you were in the system even though not long but long enough to comprehend that the high standard of living or ‘conspicuous consumption’ to use Mr Barrow’s description was visited upon us when access to credit was made available to all and sundry and as with most things for good or ill; the exorbitant taxes imposed by Government on the importation of the items for conspicuous consumption among other things were passed on the consumer resulting in the high cost of living.

  8. Judy Avatar
    Judy

    The government thinks that we are all stupid and they continue demonstrating this over and over again. They treat us, the citizens of this country like children and think that we are not smart enough to differentiate between right and wrong. What is more disturbing is that they continue to taint the beautiful image of our Barbados and present our country as a country of brainless idiots. They continue to lie at every opportunity they get and quite frankly (if it was possible), I think if we want to be taken seriously we need to lock up a few of our representatives for deception

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