High on Promises

DESPITE THE ANNOUNCEMENT in their manifesto, reaffirmation in the Throne Speech and a $4.5 million vote in the Estimates, the Dems still have no clue how to implement their much touted constituency councils.

 

 

They have hired not one, but two high-priced consultants and taken the show on the road to come back and tell us Bajans what they think we want to hear. Ironic, is it not, that these two consultants come highly recommended by another consultant who shares the same name as one of them and who has worked intimately with the other in Bermuda.

But then this is the modus operandi of this Government. No small wonder that they have failed so miserably to execute any of their election promises. They knew how to talk the talk in January, but it is now June and the only thing they have accomplished
is a lot of walking about.

We cannot blame the minister entirely. He is taking the lead from his boss who talked a lot about lowering the cost of living and whose only success so far has been to increase it, and who had to reverse himself on his no-fuel subsidy policy within six weeks of its implementation.

The Barbados Labour Party wants to tell the public and the Government that whatever the final form of the constituency councils, we will not abide by the appointment of council members by the minister. If the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) is serious about “giving power back to the people” as they said in their Throne Speech, then the people must choose their own council representatives. To do otherwise would be a low blow.

The minister must be guided by the words of his own manifesto: “It envisages a decentralising of governmental structures that allows for real participatory democracy in Barbados where public policy is not imposed from the top but results from the full involvement of a wider society.”

Certainly, it would not be outside of the competency of the electoral department to administer a simple voting process for qualified constituents who had been nominated by two or more fellow constituents three weeks before voting on a Sunday afternoon at a centrally located polling station in each constituency. How much more democratic can we get than this?

Right now there are many more questions than answers facing the minister. What is the role and function of the councils? How will they be structured? What are the parameters of their activities? Are they to be advisory or administrative? Who will be accountable for the spending of the $100 000? How will $100 000 solve “street lighting, sporting and recreational facilities, drainage, poverty alleviation and youth programmes” as enunciated in their Throne Speech?

How long a term will a council member serve? What about duplication of the functions and services provided by central Government? Will their existence make Government departments less responsive with a”pass the buck” attitude? Why is the Government only prepared to start with six councils and which will be the first guinea pigs? And this is the party that said they were ready! They clearly suffer from delusions of adequacy.

At the end of all the talk it is the minister who must craft the policy and be responsible for it. We look forward to his answers before further comment.

One final tip to our fellow DLP columnist on an entirely different subject. A warm glass of milk just before bedtime does wonders to curb nightmares of unrequited front-page stories and that Vidal Sassoon look. Deal with it – and sweet dreams!

Vision vs Myopia

It warmed our hearts on Tuesday to hear Minister Donville Inniss inform the House and the country that Barbados was embarking on the final phase of the Barbados Labour Party Government’s plan to secure the rights to our maritime space by applying to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to extend the outer limits of our continental shelf.  We congratulate the Government for finally admitting to the wisdom of our initial application to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea for a ruling on our maritime borders with Trinidad & Tobago by completing this important corollary to the plans we set in motion while in office.

Minister Inniss asked Barbadians to be proud that Barbados is the first small developing nation to make such an application. We do not know where the Minister was in April 2006 when the Arbitral Tribunal announced its Award, but Barbadians were justifiably proud then of the prescience of our team led by then Attorney-General Mia Mottley and Sir Henry Forde in what has become a landmark ruling in Compulsory Jurisdiction and Equitable Maritime Boundary Delimitation and has secured the rights to our maritime resources for generations yet unborn.

The fact that Barbados sought to keep fisheries at the heart of the boundary dispute led the Tribunal to impose a duty on both Trinidad and Barbados to negotiate in good faith to conclude a new fisheries agreement. This was a far cry from February 2004 when Prime Minister Manning declared the issue of maritime boundaries as “intractable” and a stumbling block to the conclusion of a fishing agreement. We note that Minister Inniss now expects conclusion of the fishing agreement by July, following the report from the FAO requested last year on regional flying fish stocks.

Effective leadership calls for bold decisions and sometimes unconventional actions. The Barbados Labour Party has never been afraid of either.  Owen Arthur demonstrated this when he successfully challenged our blacklisting by the WTO and Mia Mottley demonstrated it by her leadership in the Arbitral Proceedings. Left to David Thompson we would be fat and bloated on fish soup with nothing to show for it, but memories of the sea breeze at Glenburnie.

The DLP Opposition howled in unison about the $12 million dollar cost of appearing before the Tribunal. They made all sorts of outlandish claims from the Opposition benches – each one more myopic than the first. It is one of life’s ironies that in their first Estimates of Revenue for 2008 they expect to realize $70 million dollars in the first instance from the oil industry as a direct consequence of our decision to secure our maritime resources.  This is a 500% return on our investment in the Arbitral process and a clear example of the benefits of courageous and visionary leadership with significant, long-term rewards for the country.

Now of course, desperation has trumped shame as the Government seeks to re-brand our initiatives in a frantic attempt to have something positive to report about their stewardship. Minister Michael Lashley did it last week with the IADB housing programme, negotiated before the elections by the BLP and Minister Inniss has jumped on the same self-serving bandwagon this week.

Sooner or later though the coat tails will start to shorten and disappear. If the recent examples of the Prime Minister’s inability to think through the simple mechanics of a policy before implementation is any yardstick of their future successes, then Peter Wickham’s warning about the dangers of becoming a one term government may yet become one of his most famous predictions.