"Arnhim Eustace, Yellow Journalist" (and five other random political thoughts)

Since I haven’t posted a blog entry in six months, I’ve decided to (over)compensate with this interminably verbose entry, which is almost as long as the entire United States constitution. This is officially my longest blog posting in a long history of long blog postings. Medical experts recommend that you read it in 500-word chunks over the next 7 days. Enjoy, if you can:

In the mid-1890s, famed American publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst invented what came to be known as “yellow journalism.” Pulitzer and Hearst, locked in a bitter circulation battle with two rival newspapers, created ever-more scandalous and sensational headlines in an effort to sell more and more copies of their publications, facts be damned. “The practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion.” Or, put another way, “the papers themselves trumpeted their concern for the ‘people.’ At the same time, yellow journalists choked up the news channels on which the common people depended with shrieking, gaudy, sensation-loving, devil-may-care kinds of journalism.”

In the ensuing hundred-plus years, the original Yellow Journalists begat the National Enquirer, Rush Limbaugh, and News of the World.

And Arnhim Eustace.

Yes, SVG’s nominal Leader of the Opposition is a yellow journalist of the highest caliber; much more so than his erstwhile comrade-in-harm, EG Lynch, who is more of a garden-variety rabble-rouser (although an undeniably talented rabble-rouser). Eustace secured his undisputed title as the nation’s preeminent yellow journalist with months of breathless, misleading and careless predictions that the IMF was on the verge of forcing SVG into an austerity package that would make Greece’s problems look like a walk in the park.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m kinda fond of yellow journalism. In the right context, it can be light, frothy treat, like a good cappuccino.  Yellow journalism, in the hands of an expert, can be respected just for its inventiveness: Just how exactly, was that massive mountain created from that tiny little molehill?

But, problem is, we didn’t elect Eustace to be the second coming of William Randolph Hearst, nor are we paying him to be. His paycheque says “Leader of the Opposition,” and that’s how we should expect him to act. Not a glorified scandalmonger who runs to the airwaves and newspapers with every half-baked rumour that is whispered to him.

Starting with “IMF TO IMPOSE BITTER ECONOMIC MEDICINE ON SVG ANY DAY NOW,” let’s take a look at some other Eustace “headlines” that spring to mind:

“YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS: BANANA SHIPMENTS TO BE TERMINATED BY WIBDECO TOMORROW!”

“BANK RECORDS SHOW PRIME MINISTER’S CHILDREN DEPOSIT MONEY IN NCB!”

“SVG TO SWITCH RECOGNITION FROM TAIWAN TO CHINA TO PURSUE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL BID!”

“LIFE SUPPORT: NDP GIVES ULP GOV’T 6 MONTHS TO LIVE!”

“2010 ELECTION DATE REVEALED! LOOK INSIDE!”

“ULP COMMITS MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD! LEGAL CHALLENGES FORTHCOMING!”

And so on. . .

Look, I’m not so concerned whether Eustace was 100% wrong, 75% wrong or just slightly off in his breathless predictions. I’m concerned with his modus operandi. Why, oh why, must he run to the radio station before he gets all his facts straight?

Let us be clear. It is not the job of the Leader of the Opposition to “scoop” other news organisaions and be the first person on the air with the hottest news. That’s for Kenton Chance and Dougie Nose and Cyp Neehall and Clare Keizer et al. The Leader of the Opposition should then soberly comment on the headlines, analyse their meaning in the Vincentian context, and offer praise/condemnation/context/alternatives to the policies of the elected government.

If Eustace gets a hot tip from an anonymous source, he should either (a) do some checking to make sure the info is solid; or (b) pass the tip on to a Eustace-friendly journalist or publisher for dissemination. All you get from running headlong to NICE Radio with half-baked ideas is egg on your face. Eustace’s premature dissemination only makes it easier for Gonsalves to alter course, correct whatever issue there was, or make Eustace look dumb by highlighting his factual errors.

If Eustace waits, he can look statesmanlike. If he rushes, he can fall on his face. Yet, he ALWAYS rushes in, where angels fear to tread. Why?

The answer is that “real” journalists have refused to hold Eustace to account for his factless foibles. The Vincy news cycle goes like this: Eustace screams some yellow journalism headline, the press reports it as if it were a fact, it turns out not to be a fact. No one says anything. Eustace moves on to some other guestimation of fact, the process repeats itself.

I can’t believe that the Vincentian media has some sort of boundless faith in Eustace’s weekly crying of wolf, so they must just be lazy. Criminally, negligently, lazy. If someone has a 10-year record of getting the facts wrong, at some point a grain of salt must be added to the news coverage. Maybe the journalist could ask the “other side” for a comment, rather than just reporting “Eustace said X, Y, Z.” Or here’s a novel idea: the media could do some research of its own! Ever heard of fact-checking? Independently verifying a source's information before publishing?

Case in point: Eustace has been predicting for at least a month that the latest IMF Article IV consultations with SVG would lead to harsh economic prescriptions from that body. When it started to look like maybe that wasn’t the case, he said he would have to see the specifics of the “agreement” that the Gov’t and the IMF came to.

Sounds reasonable, except for one little problem: Article IV consultations do not lead to austerity measures OR “agreements.” A little Googling would tell even the casual journalist that the IMF prescribes its bitter medicine only when it is lending a country money, not when it is simply stopping by for its annual consultations. (Of course, any gov't wants the final report coming out of those consultations to be positive. A positive report means its easier to borrow money from non-IMF lenders. But the IMF can't impose conditions or structural adjustment programmes or bitter medicine during an Article IV consultation. Eustace knows this. And so should the press).

But our lazy journalists simply say “Eustace is an economist, he knows what he’s talking about.” And they report blindly. Think I’m exaggerating? Go to Google and type in this search term (including the quotation marks):

“Eustace, an economist”

Google tells me that there are about 1,390 results that have precisely that phrase: “Eustace, an economist.” Really? How about “Gonsalves, an economist” (it’s what his bachelor’s degree is in); or “Gonsalves, an expert in government” (it's what his Master’s and PhD are in). Or how about simply “Dr. Gonsalves” in the same way that Linton Lewis is always “Dr. Lewis” (and Leacock is always the “Major”). We’re always complaining that Vincentians don’t read enough. But its not like our journalists are giving us anything compelling to read, either. Just rehashed and reheated rumours from “Eustace, Yellow Journalist.”

Anyway, I digress.

Five Random Political (& Musical) Thoughts:

RANDOM THOUGHT #1. “Whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it.”

So let me get this straight: Back in the election campaign, Gonsalves called Vinnie Vee a “tomboy” and made some tasteless joke that her dad sent a daughter off to school and got a son back in return. In another meeting, on another day in another locale, Gonsalves again took up the topic of Vynnette, saying she was too inexperienced to be a good representative (he used typically colourful terms like “force ripe” or “fluxy”). Now, during the “Fluxy” meeting, people in the crowd began chanting that Vynnette was a lesbian (I hear that truth is a defence to that kind of slander, but again, I digress). While the crowd chanted "lesbian" at that meeting, Gonsalves made no comment about her sexuality or made any tomboy innuendo.

But Vynnette, in complaining to the High Court about Gonsalves’ utterances, swore to an affidavit, which incorrectly claimed that the “lesbian” crowd comments were made DURING the TOMBOY meeting and not the FLUXY meeting. Why is this important? Because Vynnette claimed (and the court agreed) that it was the juxtaposition of the call and response of “tomboy” and “lesbian” that led to the unmistakable defamatory meaning of the Comrade’s picong.

Turns out that the Frank DaSilva, the guy who gave VinnieVee the copies of the tapes of both the “Tomboy” and the “Fluxy” meetings went back and listened to the tapes, and realized that ‘ole VinnieVee was pulling a fast one on the court. Which is a problem, because under Vincy law, that kind of oath-rigging is a criminal offense, and can land you in jail for 2-5 years.

Now I don’t think ‘ole Vinnie Vee deserves any jail time. She was just – as usual – a lil bit hysterical and over the top. But, by the same token, she shouldn’t be putting people in court for campaign picong. While Gonsalves was on one platform hinting that Vinnie was one dance step away from Chaz Bono, NDP candidates were calling Ralph a rapist, a money-launderer, and even a child molester (I heard it with my own two ears). Traditionally we suspend the laws of libel and slander in an election season. Vinnie didn’t honour that understanding, and now it might bite her in the ass.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Here is my real question though: Assuming that Gonsalves had his usual high powered (and high priced) legal team of Anthony Astaphan, Grahame Bollers, Richard Williams and Rochelle Forde on the case, how come NOBODY noticed that Vinnie’s affidavit was bogus before the High Court ruled in the case? When Frank DaSilva is rescuing Ralph Gonsalves from legal drama, something’s wrong with your legal team, Comrade.

RANDOM THOUGHT #2:  “Never mind, I’ll find someone like you, I wish nothing but the best for you.”

The big news out of the 2011 NDP Convention was the rank-and-file’s overwhelming rejection of Senators Anesia Baptiste and Vynnette Fredrick for plum positions within the party hierarchy. VinnieVee got trounced by Ernesto Cooke, a political chameleon who, this time last year, was cavorting with Gonsalves and trying to be selected as a ULP elections candidate. Against this Johnny-come-lately, Vinny (the incumbent Public Relations Officer and loudest voice in the party) could only muster 37% of the vote.

Anesia, typically overzealous and with her typically overinflated sense of self, ran for party Chairman (Chairwoman? Chairperson?), and got the reality check of her life, garnering a mere 7% of the vote in a three-way race, and placing a distant third behind incumbent Linton Lewis (Sorry, DR. Linton Lewis) and (credible) challenger Daniel Cummings, who managed 49% and 44%, respectively.

The less said about VinnieVee on this one, the better. I’ve been calling her an empty vessel for a couple of years now. Jomo Thomas agreed with me in print about a year ago, and the NDP delegates are now simply concurring. She’d already been stripped of her role as caretaker/future candidate in West St. George, so its clear that the party was souring on her. Now that she’s lost the PRO gig, it’ll be interesting to see how long she’s kept around in the Senate before she’s allowed to make a graceful exit. (The irony is that I’ve always thought that she could be effective in a loudmouth/rabble-rouser/event planner type of role, just not a candidate. They should’ve replace Lynch with VinnieVee, not Cookie.)

Even though Anesia must still be waking up with nightmares from the blows she got in the race for Chairperson of the party, she’s not mortally wounded. She’s still got a bit more brains and a bit more work ethic than Vynnette, and she’s curbed her more shrill and theocratic instincts, for the time being. She’s young and will recover. Anesia's (distant) future is still in decent shape. She simply won’t be Prime Minister by 2015, as she’d hoped. We can all live with that, I think.

But the REAL story out of the convention is Arnhim’s weakness in his own party; and the REAL questions surround Anesia’s motivation to enter a race she knew she was gonna lose.

Let’s first deal with the weakness of Eustace, an economist. Here we have an unmistakable rejection of the hand-picked senators of the former Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, three-time winner of East Kingstown, and leader of the NDP. ‘Lest we forget, Eustace, an economist, appointed Anesia and Vynnette himself, and consulted no one in the party on their selection. Now, these two women, manifestations of Arnhim’s political acumen and the face of the Eustace wing of the party, got their hats handed to them by (a) a political nomad (Cooke), and (b) the leading representative of the Son Mitchell faction of the NDP (Dr. Lewis).

Arhnim’s coattails are shorter than the hair on his head. His own party does not trust his political judgment. That’s the real story from the NDP convention.

More interesting to me is the “what was Anesia thinking” question. I know that she thinks that her “dear people” love her, but I refuse to believe that she was so deluded to think that she would have been catapulted to Chairperson of the NDP. Could she be that dense? The possible answers to “what was Anesia thinking?” are:

1. She wasn’t thinking, she’s a crazy member of an anti-Semitic religious cult. Maybe God told her to run;
2. She thought it would be a good way to get her name out there, or to empirically test her support among the party faithful;
3. She really thought that the rank-and-file members of the party love and support her enough to beat two party stalwarts who have garnered thousands of votes in their own General Elections campaigns; or
4. She wanted to play the spoiler.

What, you say? The spoiler? Please explain, Vincy Patriot!

Sure, here goes: There are two factions in the NDP. The Mitchell, old-NDP faction, (they’re older, remember the glory days, are motivated by personal greed, glory, or plain old bad mind); and the Eustace, new-NDP faction, (younger, came of age under ULP government, no memory of the Mitchell era, urban, bourgeois, and focused on identifying problems, but not fixing them). The face of the Mitchell faction of the party is Linton Lewis (DR. Linton Lewis), who has publicly criticised and clashed with Eustace and who Eustace, an economist, refuses to appoint to the Senate, despite Lewis’ decade-long public pleading for the job.

Now the Mitchell and Eustace factions of the party are just about evenly balanced. Want proof of that? Look at Lewis’ vote totals for Chairman. He got 49% of the vote. That’s pretty much right down the middle.

Eustace, an economist, wants to put his stamp on the NDP, a decade after Mitchell’s exit, but he can’t get it done if the Chairman of the party is a Mitchell acolyte. So what does he do? He prompts one of his boys – Daniel Cummings – to challenge Lewis for Chairman. With a 50-50 split between the Mitchell and Eustace factions, the balance of power would be decided by – you guessed it – a third candidate spoiler.

Look at the numbers. Anesia got a paltry 19 votes. But Cummings only lost to Linton by 13 votes! If Anesia was out of the race, where do those votes go? I say they go to Cummings, because the Mitchell faction has been virulently anti-Anesia from the day she was appointed Senator. I don’t think she got any votes from that side of the fence.

What I’m saying is this: if Anesia stays out of the race, Daniel Cummings defeats Linton Lewis 138 to 132, Lewis’ political career is over, and Eustace, an economist, has a stronger hold on power internally. Instead, Arnhim ends the day weaker, since delegates at the convention rejected everyone in the party associated with him (Vynnette, Anesia, Cummings).

So let’s assume Anesia wanted to play the spoiler. Who was she trying to spoil? Linton or Cummings? The questions you must ask yourselves, dear readers, are these:

1. Did Anesia want Cummings to lose, and if so, why? (Because she likes Dr. Linton? Because she sees Cummings as a threat to her future ascendance? Because she didn’t want Arnhim cementing his hold on the NDP party structures?)
2. Did Anesia actually want to ensure that Dr. Linton lost, but misjudged her effect on the race? (Did she think she would siphon votes from the Mitchell faction?)
3. Did Anesia’s Trini mentor, that mighty prophet of Thusia, take a break from molesting little girls in TnT and order her to enter the race?

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm. . .

RANDOM THOUGHT #3. “Come Mr. Tally Man, Tally Mi Bananas.”

The Ministry of Agriculture is a mess. It’s a joke. It’s a messy joke. Every year, we grow less stuff than we grew the year before, and the Ministry of Agriculture is looking more like the ministry of farmer’s welfare, because it seems to be doling out more and more money in emergency assistance to farmers than anything else.

Now, I get that Hurricane Tomas destroyed 99% of all banana cultivation in SVG (who was the lucky farmer with the 1% that survived? Was he growing bananas in a cave?), but the post-Tomas return of bananas could hardly have been less auspicious. Black Sigatoka, Leaf Spot Disease, failing to spray crops, buy spray for crops, etc. Only 66% of our bananas are good enough for export, and the standard is 85%. Things are bad.

You think cocoa cultivation is gonna change things? First off, anybody reading this blog should know that I am no fan of this cocoa initiative, and less so of Amajaro, the shadowy, exploitative conglomerate behind the move. But even if cocoa was a fantastic idea, is this the ministry you want implementing it? The gang that can’t shoot straight messed up the simple replanting of bananas, a crop we’ve grown for about a hundred years. You think they’ll be able to handle a BRAND NEW cash crop?

Now, the face of all this bumbling is the Minister of Agriculture, Montgomery “Carib” Daniel. ‘Gomery is a nice guy, affable, pleasant, and a farmer himself. But under him, the Ministry of Agriculture is sputtering. Its full of technocrats with fancy qualifications from fancy universities, but none of those technocrats have any dirt under their fingernails, let alone experience with SVG’s farming community. ‘Gomery has deferred to them at every turn, while they generate cool PowerPoint presentations and impressive 5-, 10-, and 20-year plans for agriculture. Never mind that none of the farmers in out agricultural belt are buying into these plans.

The inmates are running the asylum. When ‘Gomrey blamed faceless bureaucrats in his Ministry for screwing up the banana pest control, he was probably telling the truth. He’s given up so much of his authority to his underlings, he doesn’t understand why he should be getting blamed for their fuck-ups. But the buck gotta stop somewhere, and that somewhere is either his desk or Ralph’s.

For the sake of agriculture in SVG, ‘Gomrey should be reassigned. But for the sake of politics, he can’t be. First off, Gonsalves’ razor-thin margin of victory means that he doesn’t have many options in the cabinet to replace ‘Gomery. Saboto Caesar would be a solid choice, but Gonsalves likes his tourism ministers to be young, bald and handsome, and with Glen Beache’s retirement from politics, Saboto’s all he’s got (In a pinch, Gonsalves will also hand the Ministry of Tourism to a fat female lawyer with false hair, but Rene retired and Fife couldn’t win an election if she were running unopposed). Plus, moving from Tourism to Agriculture is a demotion in our economic/political context, and you can’t demote Saboto, the party’s heir-apparent.

Girlyn Miguel is from the party’s agricultural belt, and is a steady hand, but I for one can’t imagine ‘Gomery taking over Girlyn’s role as Education Minister. Swapping Girlyn for Gomery would trigger a major cabinet reshuffle that Gonsalves doesn’t seem to have an appetite for this early in his third term (Gonsalves himself would be a great agriculture minister – son of a farmer, constituency in the agricultural belt, likes to eat – but he can’t take on another ministry. And if he did, he’d be so busy that he’d leave the day-to-day matters to the same technocrats who’re screwing it up now).

Plus there’s one more issue. Up there in North Windward, agriculture’s all they’ve got. If Gomery loses the Minister of Agriculture gig, he loses a great deal of power and influence in that constituency, which is crucial to the ULP’s plans for staying in power past 2015.

I don’t see ‘Gomery going anywhere.

RANDOM THOUGHT #4. “Everything Old is New Again”

As I’m writing this, I’m reading that the St. Lucia Labour Party has roared back into power after only one term in opposition. I dunno the first thing about St. Lucian politics, so I won’t express an opinion on the ‘Lucian ramifications. But locally, I know that Ralph must think Christmas has come early, while Eustace, an economist, is probably grinding a few more layers of enamel off his teeth.

Kenny Anthony’s SLP couldn’t be more like Gonsalves’ ULP. They are two peas in the same ideological pod. Meanwhile, Stephenson King’s UWP was basically the St. Lucian branch of the NDP. I mean, the SWP was even founded by Mitchell’s cousin, John Compton! Eustace, an economist, crowed loudly about the SWP’s surprise victory over Kenny Anthony a few years ago, and called it a harbinger of the NDP’s impeding victory in SVG. Funny how things work out.

Meanwhile, Gonsalves must be giddy. A couple years ago, Gonsalves would’ve looked around the region and felt pretty lonely. In addition to Kenny Anthony, his buddy Patrick Manning was gone in TnT. Same for Owen Arthur in BIM. His sister party in Jamaica, the PNP, was out of office, and his friends in Antigua and St. Kitts were looking shaky.

Today, in the OECS, Gonsalves has a solid base of friends and like-minded leaders. To one degree or another, the governments of Dominica, St. Lucia, Antigua and St. Kitts are on the same left-of-center page as SVG (I dunno if Tillman Thomas in Grenada is clever enough to have an ideology – or a thought – of his own). Kamla is in real trouble in TnT, Bruce Golding quit as Prime Minister of Jamaica, and the untimely death of David Thompson has revived Owen Arthur’s moribund political career.

As the regional pendulum once again swings to the left, maybe we can make some progress with regional integration. If Jamaica’s JLP and Trinidad’s COP stay in power, CARICOM aint goin anywhere good. But with the Gonsalves-Skerrit-Anthony corridor now forming the backbone of the OECS, we may make some progress on that front.

RANDOM THOUGHT #5. “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas”

I’m a Christmas sap. I play the carols all day. I’ve never missed a single morning of Nine Mornings in my life. I buy gifts months in advance and seconds before stores close on Christmas Eve. I love wrapping and unwrapping gifts. I (gasp!) make my annual, non-funeral, non-wedding trip to church. I actually believe in the whole peace on earth, goodwill to all men bit. And Santa. I believe in him too.

If you’re atheist or religious. If you’re apathetic or involved. If you believe in Buddah, Allah, Shiva, Shango, Selassie I, a Catholic God, a Baptist God, an Anglican God, a Methodist God, a 7^th Day God. Whether your God is a he or a she. Whether your God is loving, forgiving, or fire, brimstone and eternal judgement/damnation. Whether your God wants you to be rich or sees virtue in poverty. Whether you worship your God with idols, obeah, voodoo, in a church, in your house, by a river. Whether you pray daily, never, or only when you're in trouble. Whether there is such a thing as "Christmas" in your religion/lifestyle/culture/custom/tradition/history/consciousness.

Whether your God wears red stars or yellow keys.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD MONTH!

Sir James Throws Eustace Under the Bus: Instant Reaction

I’ve been idly wondering what was going to get me back to blogging. Its been a while. Plenty of stuff has been happening in Vincy politics, stuff that I could love (free laptops for kids!), hate (reinstating convicted criminals as police officers!), chuckle at (ULP’s “sea of red” anniversary mobilisation dwarfing all NDP demonstrations combined), weep at (those floods in G-town are serious), or just shrug (another parliamentary walk-out). But with all that stuff happening, nothing was particularly interesting on a take-out-your-laptop-and-blog-about-it level. It all seemed so, well, obvious.

Until Sir James showed up on my TV screen a couple hours ago.

I don’t usually watch Jerry George’s dimwitted platform for NDP greybeards, but I left the TV on channel 45 after Jomo’s monologue and got sucked in. What I witnessed, after a (too) long buildup of correspondence between Ralph and James, was the most brutal act of public political fratricide in Vincentian history. Facing Jerry George’s softball questions, Sir James zealously cut Eustace off at the knees, and then beheaded him for good measure.

After Mitchell’s surgical strike, Eustace is about as viable as NDP leader as Osama bin Laden is as Al Qaeda leader.

I watched the whole thing. Part of it was the morbid curiosity that makes me slow down to watch a car accident on the side of the road. But the other part was that I was struggling to process it all. WTF? Why now? What was said? What was unsaid? Here is my review and instant reaction to what I just saw (caution: final opinions may differ from instant reactions, after sufficient rum shop debate).

Instant Reaction #1 – Sir James: Original VincyPatriot?

The first part of the interview was dedicated to establishing Anansi’s bona fides as a true patriot. He told us, in mind-numbing detail, about his every letter and telephone conversation with Gonsalves over the last decade. What did they talk about? According to Sir James, big issues: human rights, fisheries, financial blacklists, agriculture, and maritime boundaries. Major issues of national importance. This build-up served three purposes. First, Mitchell is showing us how much he loves his country. For Son so loved Vincy, he can speak with the enemy. Second, he’s showing us that his conversations with the Comrade are nothing new, and didn’t start with his self-serving Amajaro cocoa project. And third, it sets him up as the nice guy, which will make his later assassination of Eustace more credible. If you watch a recording of the interview later, you can skip this part.



Instant Reaction #2 – Sir James: The least interesting man in the world?

In Mitchell’s mind, this part is titled “Sir James: Agricultural Expert.” After establishing his patriotic bona fides, he was trying to do the same for his agricultural expertise. I considered turning off the TV here. You know those ads for Dos Equis Beer that star “the most interesting man in the world?” Lets just say that Sir James won’t be drinking any Dos Equis beer at the Frangipani any time soon. Jerry George should be shot for letting Mitchell drone on about the evolution of the cocoa bean. I mean, really. If I wanna know what Montezuma served the Spanish conquistadors for dinner (seriously), I’ll Google it.



Instant Reaction #3 – Sir James: Cocoa Impresario?

You see this Amajaro thing? I aint buying it. I don’t care if its NDP or ULP selling, I aint buying. Amajaro is a group of speculators that stockpile cocoa beans, drive up the price by artificially controlling supply and demand, and engaging in illegal blood chocolate smuggling (think blood diamonds, but with cocoa beans). Through it all, everyone associated with Amajaro gets filthy rich, except the farmers. Ask how many African cocoa farmers have been lifted out of poverty by Amajaro. And how many "slaves" are harvesting cocoa in the motherland.

So my teeth were on edge in this part of the show, where Sir James extolled the virtues of Amajaro and cocoa farming. He made the point – and it’s a good point – that Amajaro wants a private sector partnership directly with individual farmers, “not ULP or NDP government.” But the cocoa segment was begging a whole bunch of questions that Jerry George didn’t ask, so let me ask them for him:

Q: “Anansi, do you take me for an ass?” – The way Sir James tells the story, he independently came up with the idea for cocoa production, and mentioned it at an NDP convention. After he makes this presentation, he coincidentally bumps into an Amajaro executive in Bequia, and they exchange contact info. These execs then show up in SVG, coincidentally at election time, where he and his daughter show them around. Wow.

Q: “So hold on, Arnhim has NEVER met with Amajaro?” – Remember during the election, when Arnhim had his hasty, 11th hour, weekend news conference where he announced concrete plans to build the airport, a hotel, a banking centre, and a cocoa plantation? Well, Arnhim said that he’d been in lengthy discussions with all these people. When pressed for details, the only detail he could muster was the word “Amajaro.” He’d met with Amajaro, and they wanted to do business with SVG. But to hear Mitchell tell it, Arnhim NEVER met with Amajaro! In fact, when James and Louise Mitchell asked Arnhim and Godwin Friday to meet with Amajaro, they refused! So, um, on what basis was Arnhim presenting this plan to the Vincentian people? And on what ground can he claim ownership of it now?

Q: “What has Amajaro given you or promised you?” – James says that Lenny Daisley met with Amajaro. He says that Lenny later told him that Arnhim wanted to know “where is the cocoa money?” Um, what cocoa money is that? Apparently, Arnhim and his wife think that James put “the cocoa money” in his daughter’s account. Um, again, what cocoa money? Did someone plant, harvest and sell cocoa when I wasn’t looking? C’mon Jerry, do your job!

One thing that Mitchell made perfectly clear is that Amajaro doesn’t give a fast flying fuck whether the ULP or the NDP is in power. They had some questions about SVG’s topography, and the ability of our farmers to plant and harvest cocoa. Mitchell pointed out, quite rightly, that our farmers are the best. But when Jerry asked him if Amajaro had any issue with the fact that ULP won the election, Mitchell said no. Of course, the Eustace line straight through the election was that Amajaro would never ever do business with the communist-terrorist-Cuban-Venezuelan-Iranian-rights trampling-idiot Gonsalves. This, apparently, was not true. So Arnhim never actually speaks to Amajaro, but then also invents their motives for doing business?? And THIS is the guy who’s the business savvy option in SVG?



Instant Reaction #4 – Sir James: Political assassin?

All of this TV show, of course, was leading up to Mitchell’s murder, beheading, disemboweling and dismembering of Eustace as leader of his beloved NDP. For those of you who missed it, let me paraphrase Mitchell for this section of the interview:

I made Arnhim. Every job he’s ever had in SVG, I gave it to him, including that of Prime Minister. I even gave him the East Kingstown seat. Arnhim has lost three consecutive elections and hasn’t come to grips with his latest defeat. He’s a senior citizen, who shouldn’t be trying to become Prime Minister at age 70. I resigned when I lost an election back in the 70s; shit, I stepped down when I won an election and handed the thing over to Arnhim. The NDP has plenty of talent, and that talent should be embraced (read: not pushed aside like my main man Linton Lewis). Arnhim is not indispensable, not at all. His time has come and gone. I don’t agree with all these endless demonstrations and court cases. Elections are won on Election Day, not in the courts. Arnhim has lost three straight democratic elections, and a leader needs to listen to the will of the people. There is a greater danger of Ralph catching up to me as a 4-term Prime Minister than there is of Arnhim winning the next election. Hang it up. Oh, and by the way, I’m the guy who hatched the NDP’s victorious referendum strategy, but they ignored me when election time came around. Even my former lieutenant Cruickshank dissed me on my expertise. And other than my daughter Louise writing the section in the NDP manifesto on the environment, I had nothing to do with that piece of shit document that doesn’t even mention the word “cocoa” in its agriculture section. Resign, Arnhim!

Damn! I mean, damn! Has that ever happened in Vincy politics? For a former party leader to take to the public airwaves and brand his successor a loser while calling for his resignation? This is what Mitchell came on TV to say. All this Mitchell the patriot, Mitchell the cocoa expert, everything was leading to this premeditated attack on his handpicked successor. It was great theater. It was brutally efficient. But it was also sad. Who, exactly are Arnhim’s friends in the NDP? It aint Mitchell. It aint Linton Lewis. It aint “major” Leacock. Who does he have? Anesia and Vynette? You’re leader of a party since 2000, and your main allies are two unelected rabble-rousers that emerged in the last 24 months? Wow.



Instant Reaction #5 – Sir James: Money makes the world go ‘round?

Mitchell offered an interesting, and unsolicited window into his overarching political philosophy. He was talking about SVG’s long history of one-seat majorities, and what it took for them to fall. In a word, it takes money and bribes. Labour bribed someone $50,000 back in the day to switch sides. Not to be outdone, P.H. Veira chipped in a $75,000 bribe in the PPP era. The “Road Block Revolution” was successful in Mitchell’s mind, not because of the involvement of the teachers, nurses, police and civil servants, but because of money spent to rent trucks and mobilize the masses. It all comes down to cash. Sir James' entire political thesis is that what you need to form government is plenty money. Not ideas, vision, plans, accomplishments, alliances, charisma, luck, nada. Hard, cold cash. That's what you need.

Mitchell didn’t say this approvingly or disapprovingly. He just said it as a matter of fact. If you wanna bring down the ULP, you don’t demonstrate, you bribe. Now, if only I could figure out what’s the equivalent of that $75,000 bribe in 2011 dollars...

 

 

 

 

 

(btw, this entire blog posting was typed and posted on my nephew's free netbook. Pretty cool, huh?)

A change of law we can all agree on...

In yesterday’s midweek Searchlight, I wrote a letter to the editor under the headline “A Change of Law That We Can All Agree Upon…” In it, I ask parliamentarians to consider changing our laws to abolish our oath of allegiance to the Queen, and replace it with an oath to St. Vincent and the Grenadines instead. You could go buy a Searchlight, and get this wisdom distilled into a couple hundred words, or you can read on, and get the unabridged version for free (Save your time! Buy the Searchlight!)

When I was reading up on the changes that the ULP planned to make to the Representation of the People Act, I borrowed a law book from a lawyer buddy of mine. Volume I of the “Laws of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Revised Edition, 1990” contains the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, plus other laws. (quick aside: did you know that it has been almost 20 years since the laws of SVG were compiled? That all the new laws since 1990 are scattered around in little books and pamphlets that only lawyers have access to? Why don’t we have revised laws dated 2010? How ‘bout 2000? And why aren’t all our laws online somewhere?)

Anyway, when I was flipping through the book, I stumbled on Chapter 6, Section 62, Form B of the Representation of the People Act. Here’s what it says:

PART VIII

Provisions Relating to the House of Assembly

62. Every person elected as a member of the House of Assembly shall, before sitting or voting therein, make the declaration of qualification in Form A and take and sign the oath of allegiance in Form B hereunder.

. . .

Form B

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

I, ____________________________________ do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Her Heirs and Successors, according to law.

SO HELP ME GOD.

Ah, so there was the despised oath. Loyal readers of my blog (both of you, lol) know that I have been bitching about this oath for a while. I bitched about it during the referendum debate. In December, after the first parliament of ULP III, I complained again about “all those proud black people and anti-colonialists pledging loyalty” to the Queen. It really makes my skin crawl.

But I was shocked to see the oath right there in a regular law. If it’s just in a regular law, can’t we change it? I asked my lawyer buddy, who said nah, you can’t change it. He said that Australia and Canada still swore allegiance to the Queen too. He said that until you become a republic, parliamentarians in Commonwealth countries swear allegiance to the Queen. He said that that ship sailed when the “Yes” vote got its ass kicked in the referendum.

Yeah, yeah, referendum ass-kicking. Don’t remind me. But my buddy hadn’t really answered my question: if the oath is in a regular law – a law we are in the process of amending – why can’t we change the words of the oath?

I went to Wikipedia. Sure enough, Australia and Canada still swear allegiance to the Queen. BUT – and it’s a big BUT – they do it because the words of the oath are in their CONSTITUTION, not just in regular law!! In fact, politicians in Canada (especially Quebec) have been trying to change the oath for a while, but they haven’t been able to, because it would require a constitutional amendment. It’s right there in the Fifth Schedule of the Canadian Constitution.

Same thing in Australia: plenty people wanna change the oath, but its entrenched in their constitution, smack bang in the schedule. They need a constitutional amendment to change it, too.

So, the next thing I did was look in OUR Vincy Constitution. Is the Oath tucked away in there somewhere too? The answer is no. The oath is NOT in our Constitution. I looked in the law volume I had, and I looked in the version that’s online. No Oath.

So we CAN change the oath! Right?

I go back to my lawyer buddy, and confront him with the evidence of my legal sleuthing. (Repeated disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night). He asks me: “Well, what DOES our Constitution say about the Oath?”

I have an answer for him:

• Section 21 says that the Governor General has to take the Oath of Allegiance, but it doesn’t spell it out.
• Section 34 says that the Supervisor of Elections has to take the Oath of Allegiance, but also doesn’t spell it out. Same thing for members of the House of Representatives (Section 39); Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries (Section 58); members of the Public Service Commission (Section 77); and people applying for citizenship (Section 93)
• Then it says (Section 105): “‘oath of allegiance’ means such oath of allegiance as may be prescribed by law”.
• The Second Schedule of the Constitution, which deals with the transition from being a colony to being an independent country, says (Section 7) that “Until such time as the oath of allegiance, the oath of secrecy or in relation to any office, the oath of office is prescribed by law, that oath may be taken in the form prescribed immediately before the commencement of the Constitution.”

Translation: The Vincy Oaths are spelled out by our regular laws, NOT our Constitution. If we don’t have an applicable oath in our regular law, we can just use the old one we inherited from the Brits until we come up with our own.

So, as I said in my Searchlight letter: “In other words, to whom or to what our parliamentarians swear allegiance is entirely up to them.”

Hearing my evidence, my lawyer buddy shrugged and said “Hmm. I guess you can change the wording then.” With that, he went back to drafting some affidavit or divorce or something else lucrative and inconsequential.

THIS IS NOT A SHRUGGING MOMENT!! THIS IS A BIG EFFING DEAL!!

OK, it’s not a ‘free at last! free at last! thank God almighty, we're free at last!’ moment, but still. There are two reasons we should change the Oath, and change it now: Nationalism and reconciliation.

The Nationalism reason is simple. Our politicians should be swearing to be faithful and true to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Or Vincy citizens. Or our Constitution. Or all of the above. We should NOT be swearing it to the Queen. Seriously: what is the practical effect of swearing allegiance to the Queen? How can you be bound to that oath? Are our leaders answerable to the Queen? Is it their job to advance the Queen’s interests? ‘Course not. So the Oath to her is just a bunch of empty words: “I swear to do nothing. So help me God.”

(The colonial counterargument is that since SVG is a realm of the Queen, and she is our head of state, she represents the embodiment of the country. So swearing allegiance to her is really the same as swearing allegiance to her realm, SVG. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. First of all, Queeny has a bunch of realms. So if I swear allegiance to her, am I simultaneously swearing to all of her realms? No offence, but I don’t think our parliamentarians should be swearing allegiance to Canada, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea, thankyouverymuch. Also, how come other countries don’t swear allegiance to their head of state? I don’t hear Americans swearing to Obama – they swear to uphold their constitution. India doesn’t swear to its president, nor does Trinidad and Tobago. They swear to their republic and to defend their constitution. C’mon.)

We have one national hero in SVG: Chatoyer. What did he do that was so heroic? He fought the British and their monarchy. He was a nationalist. What do we do to honour him? We have our government officials swear allegiance to the same monarchy he was fighting.

Am I missing something?

The reconciliation reason is also simple: We’re in a poisoned political climate right now. The NDP has decided to challenge everything that the ULP proposes. Opposing parties are literally in the streets demonstrating against each other. Things are so bad in SVG that we have a Ministry of National Reconciliation.

Now, how do you begin reconciliation? You find something that everyone can agree on, and you agree on it. Changing the Oath isn’t gonna increase the deficit. It’s not gonna victimise anyone. It’s not taking away anyone’s rights. It’s symbolic. It’s profound. But it’s ultimately harmless.

Couldn’t we all agree on that?

Now watch how you tie the nationalism and the reconciliation together:

We already know that there will be a sitting of Parliament on March 3rd. That’s 11 days before Heroes Day, when we honour Chatoyer. We also know that the NDP will probably drag their supporters back onto the streets to demonstrate, and that “the major” Leacock will be out looking to “take the first bullet” as he pledged last week (of course, there were no bullets being fired and the police were unarmed, so it was an easy pledge to make. Good job, “major”. You are so brave.).

So the Government should add the amendment of the Representation of the People Act to the agenda. They should change the words of the Oath to something more patriotic. If the NDP has any sense, their parliamentarians will come off the streets for an hour or so to join in the unanimous passage of the amendment. All sides can make patriotic/nationalist statements, and all say “Aye” to push it through. The NDP will then say that they are still able to put partisanship aside in the interest of the people. The ULP will say that all of their changes to the Representation of the People Act are designed to bring it into modern times, including the parts that NDP is demonstrating against.

They will both say, with some justification, that the new Oath is more significant. They can say that the country of SVG and the rights of her citizens are now front and center in the consciousness of the Parliament, and that all secondary foolishness should be swept aside, in the interest of our people’s betterment, just as the new Oath says.

(The NDP can then go back to trying to ram the gates of Parliament and overturn fire engines.)

Then, on March 14th, up at the Obelisk, ALL members of the House should gather, and, as a chorus (not individually), they should publicly recite the words of the new Oath.

How’s THAT for a national reconciliation moment? How’s THAT for honouring our National Hero?

Yes, the Queen would still be our Head of State. Yes, we would still be a member of the Commonwealth. No, it’s not exactly a consolation prize for referendum defeat. No, it won’t make Arnhim and Ralph sit around a bonfire and sing “Kumbaya.” But it would still be one small step for parliament, one giant leap for nationhood. And it’s easy to do.

Now, we could argue about the words to the new Oath. I would go with something simple like:

I, ____________________________________ do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, her citizens, and her Constitution, according to law, so help me God.

(I’d also add the option for people to “affirm” rather than “swear,” and maybe leave off the God bit, if their religion/beliefs don’t allow).

Logic: Most modern countries swear to either their country or their constitution, or both. Trinidad’s is good (its in their constitution). It says:

“I, A. B., do swear by ............................... (solemnly affirm) that I will bear true faith and allegiance to Trinidad and Tobago and will uphold the Constitution and the law, that I will conscientiously, impartially and to the best of my ability discharge my duties as .............................. and do right to all manner of people without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.”

So TnT has: country, constitution, and a promise not to be biased. Come to think of it, that’s a good addition to ours too. Let’s steal that.

I’d add the “citizens” bit as a tip of the hat to our large Diaspora. In other words, we swear allegiance to SVG, but we aren’t just talking about the people who live here, we’re talking about all citizens, including you overseas Vincys as well. I know, I know, it’s a nice touch.

I’m flexible on most of the language, as long as country and constitution are mentioned. Even if you added that stuff and left the Queen in there as well, it would be an improvement. Not my first choice, but hey, some people love that wrinkled old white woman.

The point is, changing the Oath is easy, it will be popular, and that the time is ripe.

Let’s do it. Tell a friend to tell a friend. Let’s put SVG at the center of our government, where it belongs. It’s an “owning the government” moment that we can all get behind.

…right?

In defence of dictatorships?

I’m beginning to wonder why we went through the trouble of holding general elections last December. I mean, what’s the point of elections if the losers don’t accept the results and the winners don’t act like they won?

As I write this, the NDP and ULP are gearing up for a week of what are essentially campaign events. The NDP is going to have whistle-stop rallies down the leeward side of St. Vincent to hype its supporters up for another “lock the city” moment in their ongoing quest to stage "Road Block Revolution: The Sequel."

Not to be outdone, the ULP is gathering the troops in Biabou, presumably to get their blood boiling for a possible counter-demonstration on the same day.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we have free and fair elections 55 days ago? Didn’t the ULP win the majority of the seats and the popular vote? Didn’t the new parliamentarians get sworn in?

Yes? Then why the hell is the campaign continuing as if nothing happened?

SVG just came out of an election campaign that was over a year long. Toss the referendum campaign in there, which was essentially a dry-run for the elections, and both parties have been campaigning for two years straight. The NDP has been electioneering for at least five.

You would think that, in a democracy, campaigning would intensify and then CULMINATE with the elections. The winners would win, and celebrate. The losers would sulk, and get ready for the next election. In the mean time, we'd get back to business, and the government would govern.

Not any more. It seems like both sides have been campaigning for so long, they've forgotten how to do anything else.

These days, the elections are a sideshow. You campaign, you have an election, and you barely stop for breath before you start campaigning again. In the States, they call it the “never-ending campaign.” In this year’s State of the Union Speech, Obama called it the “perpetual campaign.” Here’s what he said:

Now, I'm not naive. I never thought that the mere fact of my election would usher in peace and harmony and some post-partisan era. I knew that both parties have fed divisions that are deeply entrenched. And on some issues, there are simply philosophical differences that will always cause us to part ways. These disagreements, about the role of government in our lives, about our national priorities and our national security, they've been taking place for over 200 years. They're the very essence of our democracy.

But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We can't wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side -- a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. . .

Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game. But it's precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it's sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust in our government.

So, no, I will not give up on trying to change the tone of our politics. I know it's an election year. And after last week, it's clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. But we still need to govern.

Sound familiar? Is this where we are now in SVG? And can our little rocks afford – literally and metaphorically – to become a microcosm of American zero-sum politics? Is this the final stage in the evolution of western democracy?

I see these people on my TV. They’re demonstrating in Egypt. In Tunisia. In Jordan. In Yemen. They want the end of dictatorships. They want democracy. Most of all, they want elections. Free and fair elections. All the talking heads on American TV are telling me that what the people need is elections.

Then I look at us here in SVG, and I wonder: Are they SURE this is what they want? Because I’m pretty sure I saw Burton Williams – who lost his seat by the 3rd largest margin of votes in the last elections – trying to physically knock down the gates of Parliament with a metal barricade, like some senile, septuagenarian battering ram. And I’m pretty sure I saw Anesia Baptiste and Vynette Frederick – whose positions in the Parliament are owed not to the electorate, nor to any party decision, but the whim of one man – screaming to the mob in the name of justice and democracy.

People say democracy is messy, but its better than the alternative.  Looking at SVG, I’m beginning to wonder. It's not like dictatorships don't have some plusses, y'know?

First of all, dictatorships are good for the dictators. Have you seen better looking 86, 82 and 70 year olds than Mugabe, Mubarak and Gadaffi? I certainly haven’t. They all look better – and younger – than Ralph. I bet the Comrade wouldn’t have aged like an Indo-Trini woman if he wasn’t battling the slings and arrows of outrageous opposition every day. I mean, look at Obama! He’s picked up so many grey hairs in two years that he’s starting to look like Nelson Mandela! It's gotta be better for your national pride if your leader is an age-defying picture of health, rather than a overweight, greying guy with puffy eyes and a limp, right?

Second, until they fall, dictators' countries are stable. People knock stability, 'til they lose it. Iraqis were bawling for the end of Sadaam until people started blowing themselves up in the marketplace, their children couldn’t go to school, and they only had water and electricity for 4 hours a day. Some Italians look back wistfully on the days of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and say “at least he made the trains run on time.” (Of course, they can be excused. Their democratically elected leader is now Silvio Burlusconi, the biggest horndog in the history of lecherous old men.)

The third cool thing about dictatorships is that the dictators can claim to be representing the will of the people, and no one can empirically challenge them. In Egypt, one million people are demonstrating in the square for the end of Mubarak. So what? Egypt has 80 million people! He could say that the other 79 million people are firmly in his corner! That’s what China did in Tiananmen Square, remember? They said, “what? You think we’re gonna be dissuaded by a couple thousand people? We have A BILLION people!” That’s what Amadinejad said in Iran too: “what, you have a million people demonstrating against me? The other 70 million people love me to death!”

See, in dictatorships, no one gets a chance to go to the polls, so they have to resort to big crowds in the town square to get their point across. There is no vote counting, so people engage in the imprecise and subjective art of crowd counting. That's how you get Rose Revolutions, Orange Revolutions, Jasmine Revolutions, etc. People say, "wow, x-amount of people wanna get rid of the government, and the government couldn't mass that many of its own supporters. That must mean that people are fed up and want a change."

Democracies are a little more scientific. Everyone gets a vote.The votes get counted. And, usually, the people with the most votes form the government.

In our democracy, the current NDP strategy is going to run into a messy little fact: As many people as they mobilize, we already know that, 55 days ago, the majority of the population voted against them. Technically, they could get 30,174 people into Heritage Square and the response could/should be “yep, that’s the number of people who voted for you. We got 2,000 more than that.”

One eightieth of the Egypian population is currently demonstrating. In our context, that translates to, what? 1,500 Vincys? I’m sure NDP can get 1,500 people to a rally. Would 1,500 demonstrators invalidate an election? How about 5,000? 10,000? 30,000?

30,000 people voted NDP. 32,000 voted ULP. According to arithmetic and democracy (and law, and common sense), that means the ULP is in government for the next 5 years. With great effort, the NDP could get 10,000+ of their 30,000 supporters out onto the street. I figure ULP can do the same. If we’re gonna set aside election results based on who can fill Heritage Square better, then why have elections at all?

Now don't get me wrong. In democracies, demonstrations are a good thing. All democratic constitutions and laws protect the right to get together and shout through a bullhorn. But, in a democracy, demonstrations have to be either (a) issue-specific, expressing popular opinion on a particular subject; or (b) an attempt to build support as the NEXT elections approach. What you cannot do, though, is mobilize for the end of a democratically elected government. You only get to do that in dictatorships.

Couple months ago, British students took to the street and started rioting. It was an issue-specific demonstration. They were vex that the David Cameron government was raising university tuition (it was a dumb demonstration, because Cameron promised that he'd do just that if he came to power. He had a mandate to raise tuition. But I digress). A few months earlier, the American Tea Party movement gathered over a million rednecks in Washington to basically flex their muscles on the eve of midterm elections. They wanna get rid of Obama, but they timed their show of force for maximal electoral impact. They wanna vote him and his fellow democrats out of office.

Neither the British nor American mega-rallies were seen as threatening the elected party's hold on power.

Here, our demonstrations are neither issue- nor election-specific. Although the elections just ended, NDP wants to force Gonsalves out of office. That's their objective. And the ULP counter-demonstration is intended to prove that Gonsalves ain't goin nowhere. This type of behaviour is not allowed in a democracy! We need a political referee to blow his whistle and penalize both parties for violating the rules of participatory electoral democracy!

By the way, there's a fourth cool thing about dictatorships: No E.G. Lynch. No Vynette Fredrick. No loud, empty, unscrupulous windbags who blabber incessantly on the public airwaves and cloak themselves in "democracy" and "freedom" when you tell their irritating asses to shut the eff up. The dissidents who stand up to dictatorships are high quality people. Bright, courageous, principled. Aung San Suu Kyi. The Dali Lama. Liu Xiaobo. Ahmad Batebi. Malcolm X. etc.

VP’s First Rule of Political Freedom: A country’s freedom is inversely proportional to the quality of its chief dissidents/freedom fighters. The less impressive the “voice” of the freedom movement, the more free the society is.

So, in the USA, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, you have Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin giving voice to the marginalized masses. Clearly the USA is in great shape.

What about SVG?: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you E.G. Lynch and Vynette Fredrick.

'Nuff said.

I don't get the logic of the ULP's Biabou rally. The ULP is being silly. They won the elections. They have popular, electoral and constitutional legitimacy. Their victory is fresh. Why are they now trying to beat the NDP at its own game of rabble-rousing? Even if they out-mobilize the NDP this week, do they win an extra 5 years in office? If they fail to mobilize, do they have to relinquish their 55-day-old victory? Their Biabou rally and counter-demonstration are just cheapening the value and legitimacy of their electoral victory. Arnhim's desperate tactics are actuallyway more understandable than the ULP's response. If we weren't gonna take a break from rallies and marches in the year or two after the election, then we should've just bypassed the damn vote altogether. It took me more time to get the ink off my voting finger than it took Ralph and Arnhim to reload and start the campaign all over again.

What do elections mean anymore? It seems that elections are just one possibility on a buffet table of optional paths to power. Lose an election? Ignore that. Force your way to power by some other means.

Robert Mugabe lost elections in Zimbabwe. He refused to leave. He’s still president. Mwai Kibaki ignored election results in Kenya to remain in charge. In Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo is simply pretending that the recent elections didn’t happen. He’s daring someone to force him out.

Election results? What election results?

Here, Arnhim and his minions are on the same path. Sure, if we won the elections, we’d take that. But we didn’t win, so we’ll take something else. The NDP is hoping to use anarchy to do what they couldn’t do by the ballot. And the ULP is planning to answer, not by pointing to their electoral and constitutional legitimacy, but with some crowd muscle of their own.

So we’re stuck here with this hybrid, worst-of-both-worlds system: No stability, typical of democracy. A reliance on mob pressure and social networks to oust or maintain governments, typical of dictatorships.

Me? I’d just like us to pick one system and stick with it. At least for the next year or two. I need some peace and quiet. And it would be nice to hear some actual serious thought on how to govern in these turbulent times. 'Till then, somebody get me the Facebook address of those kids in Egypt, I wanna have a word with them...

A Tale of Two Distractions

I’ve gotten a couple emails asking if I’m gonna do a big post on who sounded sensible and who sounded stupid in the budget debate. The answer is no. I'm super busy this week. No real time to indulge my inner (outer?) nerd and listen to hours of budget debate. I thought I'd be fighting the urge to tune in, but that didn’t happen. Maybe I'm talking to the wrong people, but no one seems to be paying a great deal of attention to the budget. Maybe political battle fatigue has set in. Politics has become such a zero-sum blood sport over the last 5+ years (especially the last 2), that we may be entering a new phase of indifference/apathy. We’ll see.

Anyway, back to my tale:

My iPod battery is dying. Vybz Kartel is racing to share with me his last nugget of wisdom on skin bleaching, misogyny and/or random violence before the limits of lithium-ion technology does what my better instincts can never seem to do -- silence 'The Teacher.' "Come touch me nuh? Touch a button nuh?" Kartel taunts one last time, before my gadget morphs from essential entertainment device to useless amalgam of metal and wires. A paperweight, maybe. I touch a button, as Katrel exhorts, but alas, the iPod has breathed its last profanity for the day.

What to do now? I can't work without a steady background of mindless, mind numbing noise. I lose myself in a Socratic/psychotic mental debate on the productivity pros and cons of Kartel and Mavado. See? My mind is already drifting! Must. Not. Lose. Focus.

Ah ha! The cartoon light bulb illuminates above my head, bathing my brain the 100-watt glow of epiphany: You want Mindless? Mind-numbing? Noise?

THE BUDGET IS ON!

I scrounge in my desk drawer for the battered transistor radio that only broadcasts NBC radio. Good old Duracel Alkaline "C" batteries -- months in the drawer, untouched and ignored, but the radio cackles to life. The soothing sound of nation building fills my workspace.

Who is this talking? It's either 'Nature' or Patel Matthews. I don't know the voices of all the new MPs yet. The new guy is talking about youth. 'That's a refreshing change,' I think. The NDP has ceded the youth issue to the ULP for the last decade. My ears perk up.

The New Guy is trying to walk a fine line between (a) blaming the government for not creating enough opportunities for youth and (b) avoiding sounding like an apologist for criminal activity. New Guy is failing miserably. The more he talks, the more he sounds like he's endorsing ganja planting and drug running. 'I hope this isn't Patel again,' I think. 'After defending Que Passa and SuperDan, this guy would officially be the MP of the criminal class.'

At least he's trying to keep it real. Or sing for his supper. In any case, his faltering, teetering political high wire act is fascinating. The first defense/rationalisation of drug dealers I've heard in Parliament. Maybe I am still listening to Kartel on my iPod? I check... The iPod is resolutely unresponsive, like that woman I was chatting up at Flow last night. No, this is definitely Parliament.

New Guy moves on. I am disappointed. Now he's attacking the YES programme. 'Why attack a successful youth internship programme?' I wonder. 'And why, with all they can easily and legitimately criticize, does the NDP insist on focusing on the ULP's most popular programs?'

New Guy has rebranded YES the "Youth Exploitation Service." Earlier, he was talking about "years of LABOUR pains." Clearly, he fancies himself a wordsmith. I am amused.

These young people are exploited, he says. In some cases, they are doing the same amount of work as regular employees, for far less money. Umm, that's what interns do, New Guy. In many places, they don't get any pay at all.

New Guy moves in for the kill. I can hear it coming. His voice rises while his cadence slows to a crawl. He wants us to make sure we catch every word of his coup de grace. He is choosing his words carefully, but with a well-practiced nonchalance. He is an assassin, carefully, but confidently, loading his weapon and adjusting his sniper scope. Only he, New Guy, knows the target.

"Exploitation!" he repeats. Then, the dramatic pause.

Here it comes...

The YES program has a budget of $2.8 million, he informs me. But of that $2.8 million, only $19,000 is paid to these exploited young people!

'That can't be right,' I think. Impossible! The muffled cross-talk begins. The speaker is trying to restore order.

New Guy repeats himself, smug now in the knowledge that the government has no answer for his kill shot. $19,000 to kids, for their hard work, out of a total of $2.8 million. It’s right there in YOUR estimates! Exploitation!

That CAN'T be right, I think. There are, what? 1,000 YES workers? So he's telling me that they each get a total of $19 for 5-12 months work? That can't be right. Maybe my math is wrong. Or maybe they ARE being exploited! New Guy is right! If the Govt is only giving them $19, they might as well not pay them! That's an insult! An exploitative insult!

New Guy is reloading his sniper's rifle. This time, he has the education revolution in his deadly scope. Here we go attacking popular programs again. He's telling me that it was a mistake to start the revolution by creating universal secondary education. I see how this fits in with his worldview -- if they're gonna end up on a ganja farm in the hills anyway, why educate older kids?

But... Wait... Julian Francis is rising on a point of order. "To elucidate," he says. He's going back to the YES program. He sounds smug too. I am confused. An experienced politician like Francis is gonna defend giving children $19 a year? And squandering $2.8 million? He should’ve let New Guy move on.

Francis is citing pages in the Estimates. He sounds coolly arrogant. He's got his own assassin swag.

He's reading the page. YES programme has 1,000 kids. The total budget is $2.8 million. But that $19,000 cited by New Guy is for wages associated with the programme. The kids don't get wages. They get a stipend for their internship.

He reads on. He's looking at the allocation for the stipend. Its on the same page, it seems. Of the $2.8 million, a full $2.1million is spent on the stipend! 75% of the total budget goes to kids' stipends!

WTF, New Guy! You can't read the Estimates? Didn't you run this past someone before you said it in Parliament? Didn't you mention your big point to Arnhim, who definitely knows how to read a budget? Did you ask any YES workers what they get paid before you fired that wildly errant shot?
 

Now you’ve got a problem, New Guy. How are you going to respond to Francis?

(a) Apologize, and concede the point?  

(b) Thank him for the elucidation, and re-frame your argument?  

(c) Stick to your guns, and insist that you are right about the $19,000?

New Guy decides on option (d) none of the above. He simply says "anyway, my point is that the young people are exploited." and he moves on.

Huh?

Didn't you say...? Don't you know how to...? Shouldn't you have...? Wasn't your whole premise...?

You know what? Never mind. I like my mindless, mind numbing noise to at least be internally consistent. Kartel makes way more sense than this.

I touch a button, and place my trusty transistor back in my cluttered drawer. I'll tune in again next year.

In the mean time, silence is golden.