In a week the Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados reported good quarter performance in the economy for the period January to March 2026, Barbados recorded another homicide, bringing the count for 2026 to 23. On current trajectory the blogmaster conservatively projects Barbados will record its highest number of 55 since Barbados Underground started the homicide tracker, relying on barbadoscrimeblog.com repository of data.
Barbadians have become numb to routine shootings across the 166 square mile island in recent years. This desensitisation and normalisation have become baked into the Bajan psyche. It begs the question, where will we land as a nation on current trajectory?
In 2018 when the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) won an unprecedented 30 seats, the most ardent supporter marked it down as a deserved victory given what had transpired during the so-called period of the lost decade. It repeated in 2022 and 2026 and we find ourselves in a country where an obvious constitutional crisis is not being given the required attention by its citizenry, including the media and academia.
How many times the well worn saying has been quoted in this space – “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” If our democratic system has inherent flaws, then every check and balance must operate at full strength to ensure that governance functions in practice, not merely in name. How can we feel comfortable as civic minded educated citizens if there is no ‘living’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC)to highlight just one check and balance, the last Auditor General retired in April 2025, over one year later and what? There is an environment that is fertile for opposition politics, however, we can manage only a token opposition given the feeble and mechanical dissent that prevails. If we continue to trivialise and give lip service to important matters what will be the result? The result is current state.
One group- and there are others- in our society that continues to fail given our investment in education is academia. Our culture is one that inflicts severe criticism on the political class but what about academia? By academia we mean – professors at UWI, Cave Hill; the researchers, lecturers, academic administrators, even some members of the student guild. We hear from a few but the injections of views and reviews of events occurring in society is not strident enough to resonate with a cynical and apathetic public. We are not getting the return on education (ROE) given the significant allocation to the national budget.
There must be something that continues to restrict us from solving our problems. One clear example: our inability to address the chaos in the public service sector (PSV). For over 50 years this group has been allowed to terrorise Barbados; sprout a subculture that has forced us to leave thousands of our young people behind – in the process, destabilising our small society.
The blogmaster has also become numb to what is a continuing creep towards societal decline. Do you remember when Barbados Underground highlighted indiscretions in the Barbados court system in the early 2000s, the many that accused the blogmaster of being alarmist? Do you recall when almost weekly Barbados Underground opined on the implications of not addressing our waste management system, and this was before waste was allowed to run on the streets on the South Coast. A reminder waste management is not about purchasing garbage trucks.
Barbados drifts, not because the warnings from here and elsewhere were unclear, but because the recurring of events have dulled our senses. The homicides increase, key institutions are visibly in decline, we have 3 billion dollars in foreign reserves BUT much of it borrowed, there is no oversight we can trust; the people we elect and hire to manage are asleep at the switch. Yet we have to listen to moderators, social media influencers, political scientists, some from academia et al offering empty explanations why citizens have become cynical and apathetic.
This is how a society slides, not in a single dramatic collapse, but through a steady erosion of standards that we quietly allow to normalise. What are WE doing?
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.