Governance matters. It is not as a slogan. It is not a bullet point in a manifesto. It is a breathing practice that determines whether we move forward as a country or remain mired in the current steady state.
We have returned Prime Minister Mia Mottley and the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) to office three successive times. This is a huge endorsement by the electorate.However, there is the uncomfortable truth that nobody wants to say out loud – the bigger the mandate, the greater the risk. Some may say – to whom much is given, much is expected.
There is the human condition which history supports. Leaders who have routinely commanded the support of the people, begin to confuse said support as blind loyalty from the electorate. They begin to treat accountability as an inconvenience rather than an obligation. It becomes a wall that blocks scrutiny from the electorate. Instead of a breathing, healthy democracy, we have a budding de facto dictatorship.
This is not an indictment of Mottley personally. It is a warning that democracy requires more than elections and an X on a ballot. It requires the space for dissent, for uncomfortable questions and issues to be asked and debated in public. Importantly, for the questions to be answered in public.
Feedback is not disloyalty. Dissent is not the enemy of progress. A leader who cannot be questioned is a leader who cannot be corrected. And a leader who cannot be corrected will eventually make mistakes that taxpayers will pay for eventually. The Westminster system we pretend to practice requires a dissenting voice to work.
The electorate is no wiser today about the number of consultants on contract with this administration than they were under the previous governments. Names, numbers, terms of engagement, cost to the taxpayer – all of it remains shrouded in the same opacity that Mottley once stood at a podium and condemned, RED bag and all.
She was right to call out the then government but why is the standard different now?
Mottley and the Barbados Labour Party promised transparency and accountability, now that she has been given the keys to Ilaro Court, the promises have been abandoned? Some of the electorate may have forgotten, others have not.
Barbadians deserve to know what they are paying for. How many consultants. What they were hired to do. What it is costing. Whether value is being received. They are basic requirements of good governance.
The former government was rightly criticised and no doubt this helped to put this Mottley government in office. It would be the height of irony if this administration, armed with unprecedented mandates, turned around and did the same thing.
Are we there yet?







The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.