Submitted by William Skinner
We seem to be lurching from one issue or crisis to another. Whether it is garbage pilling up all over de place or teachers being assaulted by students, our beloved island state now seem rudderless and heading straight for the rocks. When we add an ill conceived, basically stupid, so called no confidence motion, apparently designed to get the Prime Minister to talk; a picture of utter confusion seems to have permanently infected the body politic.
The only person who seems to have a fairly level head these days is Mr. Grenville Phillips, whose recent appearance on the rapidly deteriorating brass tacks program was intelligent and enlightening. It was a departure from almost five years of one particular moderator, who has taken it upon himself to be the main antagonist of the Prime Minister. Repetitive and one-sided contributions, designed to futilely prove that there is some real difference of what we have, the DLP, and what we gine get, the BLP, unless apparently a miracle intervenes.
Mr. Phillips has undertaken the bold task of convincing the public that Mr. Owen Arthur is as much to blame as anybody else for the economic slide that is now taking us into financial ruin and possibly oblivion. Any Minister of Finance, who left the country with perhaps all the problems he had inherited, should not be elevated to God like status. Arthur has been given a lot of credit where none was due. There are shop keepers and those who only keep shop. The only real difference between Sinckler and Arthur might be the fact that Arthur can claim he is an economist by training. They are selling the same bread in different bread carts, the result will be the same. Drowning men will clutch at a straw; Mr. Arthur is the straw of choice at this moment.
The simple truth is that as we approach fifty years of nationhood, our country finds its infrastructure in danger of becoming shambled. These two parties should be praised for what they have done and we should not be afraid to remind them that things they should have done they left undone and things they should not have done they brazenly did. Two glaring examples should suffice: Who will invest over one hundred million in a cricket stadium to see the West Indies get beat and leave old mains in the ground leaking water? That will be our friends at Roebuck street. Who will invest nearly fifty million in an office building and leave old water mains in the ground? That will be our friends at George Street. Same difference.
So in steps Mr. Phillips with his Solutions for Barbados and like all third parties, he finds himself often coming up for oxygen. Very hard to hold ones breath because of the polluted waters that are the trade mark of the BLP and DLP. Only problem is that he honestly believes that only those who have successfully managed business for a period of time and have employed a certain number of people, should get the opportunity to run the country. He may be shocked to know that over the last fifty years or so we have had quite a number of such persons in parliament and look wuh happen.
My advice to Mr. Phillips is to exclude lawyers and economists and try everybody else, except Sinckler!
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