THE BAROMETER MEASURING my mental and emotional state dropped alarmingly last week, with the needle hovering around the area marked "despair". By the beginning of the week it had risen tentatively to the spot marked "slight improvement". It went down with the no-confidence motion brought by the BLP opposition against former Health Minister Branford Taitt. The fire at the Thornbury Hill chemical plant was the cause of the slight rise.
Most Barbadians who have read newspaper publication of the PAC report would perhaps agree that the debate, most unduly and unparliamentarily delayed by various means, is a matter of national concern for the trend of government in this country for the foreseeable future. The alarm arises from the fact that some members of the government have publicly confessed their inability to recognise grave wrongdoing. For if the habit of law-breaking so evident over the past six years has dulled their perceptions, then the country and people are in dire peril.
In those circumstances, it was of paramount
importance to the public welfare that the debate should be given the widest
possible publicity. The entire debate should have been broadcast. This column
called for it. The Advocate argued the cause editorially. The NATION kept a
discreet silence. Was it intimidated into abandoning its watchdog responsibility
by the absurd charge frequently made by the DLP that it is a BLP newspaper?
When there was no broadcast, the onus of informing the public fell even more
heavily on the newspapers. They should have given greater space than usual to
the debate. Both failed miserably. In the '40s the public was far better served
when the one daily routinely published parliamentary speeches verbatim. They
were read avidly by those who bought or borrowed the paper.
In this critical debate, the papers seem not only to have been selective in the
speakers they chose to report upon; the summaries in some cases appear to have
been incompetently done. While Miss Billie Miller and Mr. Bernard St. John came
across as serious and trenchant, Mr. Owen Arthur and the experienced Mr. Henry
Forde appeared to be defensive. It was as if they and Mr. Taitt were in the
dock. I cannot believe Mr. Forde would have spent time denying the charge of a
PAC witchhunt and descending to discuss the provision of refreshment at a PAC
meeting, when he should have been demonstrating the gravity of the Minister's
conduct. To go down that road was to trivialise the issue. The PAC report with
its documented evidence and its logic was its own justification.
Have we now sunk to the standards of the bigger world in such matters? A caller
on the Larry King programme last Sunday asked how the US would reconcile its
violent opposition to North Korea's alleged nuclear capability with its
acceptance of Israel's. Israel was on their side, said the official.
That is the quality of the intellectual perception and moral probity of world
leaders today. They cannot, or cannot be bothered to, offer even a plausible
rationale for their actions. Our own late Lord Gort or the late L.E. Smith, who
never darkened the doors of a secondary school, would never have given voice to
that utterance. A Combermere Fifth Former in the school's debating society in my
time would have been pilloried for weeks as a disgrace if he was perceived to be
serious in that answer.
Today we go to school longer and leave understanding less. Hence when I heard
the boast on TV that "Turkeology is a new science", I could nod in
agreement. The people everywhere are the turkeys to be caught with corny
politricks.
Thus I cannot take Mr. Authur's indignation seriously at CBC's news that there
had been no debate on the motion. What did he expect in its handling of
hazardous political news? Without being specific, he called for heads to roll.
But it would be quite wrong if any of the CBC staff should suffer decapitation
while the controllers of its policy went unscathed. This country has seen enough
of powerless people penalised for miniscule drug possession while the kingpins
remain hidden.
Why didn't Mr. Arthur, conscious of the critical nature of the debate, press for
its broadcast? Furthermore, when the wrangling over the motion became
protracted, why didn't he ask for postponement until the next opportunity so
that an alerted public might go and hear for themselves. Instead, two of the
Opposition's biggest guns, Miss Miller and Mr. St. John, spoke late in the
evening before a small audience, and received inadequate press coverage. It was
poor strategy highly pleasing to the government.
Because of such ineptitude -- if that is the word -- by the Opposition and the
Press, and the masterly strategy of the government, the public have been kept in
the dark. The motion degenerated into a farce with only the MPs and a few people
in the gallery knowing what occurred.
How many people know now whether the voting signifies a vote for the country's
good or for the entrenchment of an "elective dictatorship" which on
Tuesday night buried the quintessential democratic safeguard of accountability?
In the event, the NATION'S verbatim publication of the speeches of Mr. Taitt and
Miss Miller after the battle was decided, serves to highlight the delinquency of
the Press in this vital debate.
Those who think the debate was merely about the St. Joseph Hospital and the
misuse of public funds, have not begun to grasp the enormity of the tragedy of
Tuesday night. With every member of the governing party voting against the
resolution, the veil has been finally lifted from the long-running charade. That
was the moment of truth and triumph of a planned war against the people.
Nevertheless, the anger of the Thornbury Hill residents following last Friday
evening's fire at the chemical plant holds a faint promise. They were adamant
that the plant should not be rebuilt on the site. But, unlike the immediate
comfort visit paid to the up-coming St. James golf course by five government
ministers when the owners apparently became uneasy over planning permission, the
distressed Christ Church residents have seen no such exalted persons.
Instead, they had visitation by the chaos now plaguing the country. Assurances
were given them to return to their dwellings before the area was tested for
toxicity, and plant staff were expected to return to work less than 72 hours
after the fire. Reportedly, there was also contradictory advice, to people still
in shock, in regard to food crops, grazing animals and the use of milk from such
animals.
Observing the confusion, I recalled the explosion at Bopol Gas chemical plant in
India in December 1984 that took several hundred lives.
No deaths here, but the after-effects are still unknown, while crop loss is
inevitable. But the Press have not yet got around to asking whether approval for
the plant site was given by the Town Planning Department or by the appropriate
minister overriding Town Planning rejection as well as advisory committee. They
might also ask about the relevant files. If unavailable, they may have been
among old files, accidentally destroyed in a fire at the old gazebo in Culloden
Road near the office of the Ombudsman and reported in both the papers last
Monday.
But who will lead the people in their militancy against re-erection of the plant
and in their claim for compensation? Will the Press fall down on this one also?
It was just over two years ago that massive protesting crowds, sensing that
their rights were being filched from them and clamouring for rectification, were
cleverly diverted from their purpose. The overwhelming defeat of the
no-confidence vote is the climax of that manoeuvre.
Can the people, now bereft of leadership from any quarter, find the courage and
the stamina to take charge of their own lives and wrest their rights from the
hands of those who, under the banner of independence, have snatched them away?
In the present circumstances, it might sound like mockery to offer wishes for a
Happy Christmas. Let me put it less vaguely: Begin again to count your
blessings. For, in the words of A.N. Whitehead, "the fact of the
instability of evil is the moral order of the world".