The eagerly awaited second session of parliament is set to restart today from about 10AM- see Order Paper. The decision to prorogue parliament from the 8 August 2020 caught political pundits by surprise and has been the source of robust debate.

The Government has determined that it is necessary that we take fresh guard. The Parliament of Barbados will be prorogued on the 8th of August, 2020, with us resuming in a new session on the 15th of September with a new Throne Speech and with a new direction as to where we must go in order to meet these extraordinarily different circumstances from the original Throne Speech of two years ago

Prime Minister Mia Mottley

Even before the pandemic struck the global economy, Barbados had been struggling with a non performing economy. The Mottley government took an immediate decision to enter an IMF program (BERT) on winning the governbment in 2018 that included a restructure of domestic and foreign debt with the contracted services of White Oak. The big concern was carrying the risk of low foreign reserves with a junk status credit rating and a high debt to GDP load- reported in 2018 as the third highest in the world.

If was not difficult for the Barbados government to manage an economy in free fall and at the same time whip confidence in a proud people who were suffering from economic fatigue, along came COVID 19. The prime minister in her wisdom- time will tell- decided to leverage the parliamentary tools at her command “to take fresh guard”.

It would be remiss of the blogmaster if the minority view offered by the contentious Pachamama in this forum was not added to this commentary.

We have been telling this PM, here on BU and through back-channels, that this ‘reset’, so-called, is highly misconceived.

Our suggestion is that an election should be called to ‘reset’ the political-economy. Not the farcical and ritualistic contrivances as planned for sometime this week.

Her sequestration, seclusion, on the gold coast should have been unnecessary as neither she nor those beating a trail to meet with her has anything of material importance to tell her beyond pomp and pageantry.

Pachamama

We are living in an unprecedented time. We are attempting to navigate uncharted waters. The challenges confronting Barbados is not a binary problem to solve. Those who enter the debate by injecting absolutes should be viewed with suspicion.

The blogmaster urges the Prime Minster and other leaders in civil society to ignore the power of this moment at our peril. This and future generations will be affected by decisions taken today.

And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them

With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,

And in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Part II, 1597

– See Parliament TV