Six years later Barbadians continue to wait for the implementation of transparency legislation. It was a campaign promise of the incumbent government made in 2008 but in 2014 remains outstanding. BU views it as another unbroken promise which makes a mockery of the social contract we refer to as the Manifesto. How can Prime Minister Stuart, Minister of Finance Sinckler, Minster Inniss and the off again on again Minister of Agriculture Estwick seriously expect sensible Barbadians to trust government’s policies, when there is incontrovertible evidence key members of the Cabinet of Barbados lied to the electorate about the urgency to rollout transparency legislation.
There is the popular saying credited to Albert Einstein, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results defines insanity. Over one decade of Auditor General reports which consistently detail unacceptable levels of graft and weak governance in the public sector therefore the need for government to urgently respond, yet implementation in 2014 remains a low priority. Bear in mind the public sector has to interact with the private sector to do business and are implicated in the sham. Also we recall the attempt to rollout similar legislation thirty years ago failed, the difference, it was a Barbados Labour Party government leading the charge then, or so it appeared. How are Barbadians expected to trust the policies of any government if there is clear evidence they have disregarded implementing policies to avoid scrutiny.
Both governments have been accused of squandering public funds and there is evidence to support the claim. In times of plenty inefficient allocation of resources will go unnoticed however in a guava season greater fiscal discipline must be the obvious approach. In fact commonsense suggests that fiscal discipline must be the preferred approach in good and bad economic times. What do successful people and organizations have in common?
There is a discipline which guides how decisions are made and IF decisions made are found to be inefficient changes are made to correct by holding central players accountable.
It is no secret BU bought into the DLP platform message promising change leading into the 2008 general election and many of our blogs are posted to support. A big part of the change promised was to root out corruption or the perception of corruption by being more transparent. It is not good enough for this government to defend keeping MOUs secret because they were never made public by earlier administrations. This administration promised greater transparency therefore creating the opportunity to depart from what other governments have done.
BU is very concerned a certain minister has been accused of depositing his off the books funds in his mother’s account, now his mother has died, her estate has a few millions and the siblings are saying the secreted funds should be split evenly. BU has been advised the family squabble has forced one of the siblings to spill the beans to the Nation newspaper but of course they cannot print it.
A reality check: six years into a DLP administration who promised change – read greater transparency in government – and the only change has been no change.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.