A Comedy of Errors (or, how NOT to win a debate on the economy)

Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit
(He who is silent is taken to agree; he ought to have spoken when he was able to)

— Latin proverb

Faithful readers (all three of you, lol): Yeah, Yeah. It’s been about 13 months since I laced up my blogging sneakers and started dropping high, arcing knowledge bombs from the political three-point line. Yeah, Yeah, I ignored your repeated calls and emails for me to get back in the game. But I’m like Derrick Rose, baby: I take a year off. . . take a week off. . . it’s all on my time. I return when my body tells me its time. 

I almost came back to dissect Arnhim’s discovery of his testicles (dissing Sir James like that was an act of balls, not brains). I was tempted to come off the bench to break down Jomo’s decision to jump into the deep end after a decade of dangling his big toe in the kiddie pool. Even before all that, I had a few thoughts to share about Luke’s Building & Loan bombshell, and the (insane or inspired?) decision to run Ben Exeter in Central Leeward. But I stayed in the gym, waiting for a particularly epic moment of political excitement or tragicomedy to make my triumphant return to the blogosphere.

On January 21st, 2014; at about 11:45am, the moment arrived.

To recap: The Budget debate was unfolding as it always does – Comrade had done his usual 4-hour presentation of the major themes in the $900 million bill, while simultaneously baiting Arnhim into a defense of austerity. Arnhim, in reply, was bobbing and weaving, peppering the budget with light jabs, presumably as a prelude to the knockout punch he planned to deliver in the later rounds.

Then. . .

Nothing.

Halfway into what was expected to be a 4-hour presentation, Arnhim said “I’m obliged,” took his seat and didn’t get back up. He was done.

Wait. what?

This wasn’t “What’s my name?” With Ali and Foreman. This was Roberto Duran telling Sugar Ray Leonard “No Mas” and staying on his stool in the eight round of a 15 round bout. 

Arnhim Eustace, NDP-anointed economic guru, Prime Minister in waiting, just sat down – two hours into a scheduled four hour presentation. 

Now, let’s put this in perspective: The NDP’s central attack on the ULP government is that the economy is in shambles. That there aren’t enough jobs. That there is no coherent plan for growth. That the ULP is investing in the wrong things. And Eustace, for all his negatives and limitations, is (curiously) viewed in some quarters as being a top-flight economist and leading budgetary light. So, all of this begs the question: If your area of expertise is budgetary matters, AND your party’s focus is economic matters, AND the whole country is watching and listening, why wouldn’t you take full advantage of your allotted time?

Anyone? Anyone?

WHOSE FAULT IS IT?

Now we have to suffer through competing claims about whose fault it was that the debate – scheduled for one week and 21 speakers – ended after a couple hours. Arnhim & Co., who decided to (1) not speak and (2) walk out of Parliament, say it’s the Government’s fault for not “speaking first” and waiting for the NDP to “set the agenda.” “We [NDP] didn’t speak, because they [ULP] didn’t speak first,” goes the argument. “They didn’t say anything, so we had nothing to respond to.” 

THIS is the Budget, not what 'Gomery Daniels says after lunch

The Comrade and his ‘copybooks’ counter by saying. “Um, did you happen to miss the 700-page Estimates of Revenues and Expenditure we presented a month ago? The book with each ministry’s expenditure broken down by chapter? The one with pages of “Results Indicators” that said what we planned to do, department-by-department? Did you read it? – Well, THAT’S the budget that you respond to, not what we say in a debate!”

The NDP point to Ralph’s statement, during his budget presentation, that his line ministers will explain their individual ministries further. The ULP point right back to Arnhim, who said he wasn’t dwelling with many of the issues in the budget, because his lieutenants and shadow ministers will break it down themselves.

Arnhim says this is to be blamed squarely on the ULP. Sir James – the “acolyte” – puts it at the NDP’s feet. Jomo says “the people know who failed them.” 

Maybe I’m not bright enough to suss out all the high-minded spin doctoring going on here. But this isn’t the NDP’s fault. It’s not the ULP’s fault either.

It’s Arnhim Eustace’s fault. Plain and simple. It’s not a party issue. It’s an Arnhim issue.

Here’s what happened: No one expected Arnhim to finish speaking so early. No one on the Government side, and certainly no one on the Opposition side. Arnhim was scheduled to speak for four hours, from 9am to 1pm. He didn’t. He started at 9:30 and went to 11:30. In the stunned confusion on both sides, in the bewildered hesitation of BOTH parties saying “did he really just sit down after only 2 hours?” Everyone looked at everyone else, nobody moved, and the moment for action passed.

That’s it.

What's not clear about this?

Look at what the Standing Orders say about speaking times in the Budget:

62(4). In a debate on the Annual Financial Statement and budgetary proposals the following time limits shall be observed:–  

(a) The Prime Minister, if he is not the Minister of Finance, 4 hours

(b) The Leader of the Opposition or Member of the Opposition side who speak first, 4 hours.

(c) Ministers,……………………………. 1¼ hours

(d) Other Members,…………………... 45 minutes 

(e) The Minister of Finance in concluding the debate,.. 3 hours

The Standing Orders list those times as “time limits”, but anyone who watches the Budget knows that these are prescribed times. No one sits down early. The talk right up until the Speaker say’s ‘time’s up’ and orders them to their seat. 

Until Arnhim’s “No Mas” moment.

Now, take it from someone who watches these Budgets: Everyone likes an audience for their presentation, so they plan their presentation time. Arnhim brought in friends and supporters to fill the “strangers gallery” while he spoke. Every government minister tells their staff what time they plan to speak, so that the room will be packed with lowly ministry functionaries, who are all too glad for the excuse to be out of the office. Every opposition politician calls his main constituents and tells them when they’re going up to bat, so that there is a friendly gallery of supporters to pander to.

Everyone does it.

Now, imagine you are Minister “A” or Opposition MP “B”. You’ve told your supporters/staff to come hear you speak “after lunch” or “first thing Wednesday morning.” It’s all planned. It’s informally agreed and mapped-out with fellow colleagues and comrades.  

Then here comes the first domino, tumbling inelegantly, and prematurely, out of place, and screwing up the plan. Whose fault is it? That first domino. Sure, maybe someone could have – should have – jumped up and filled the gap left by Arnhim’s premature budgetary ejaculation. (According to Freud, “rapid ejaculation is a symptom of underlying neurosis. The man suffers unconscious hostility toward women, so he ejaculates rapidly, which satisfies him but frustrates his lover, who is unlikely to experience orgasm that quickly”. Knowing Arnhim’s hostility towards Ralph, ole’ Sigmund may be onto something!). But the only person who was quick enough on their feet was the Comrade, who – despite probably not expecting to wrap-up until Friday – was able to speak off-the-cuff for an hour longer than Arnhim’s prepared remarks.

There was no strategy on either side here. If you believe this went according to some master plan, you’re crazy. Look at the collection of egos on either side of that Parliament: You think any group of them could be convinced to forego an hour-long monologue in the national spotlight? Really? Then why were they all there with so many books, scribbling notes furiously? What were they preparing for?

Arnhim screwed up, and no one was prepared for the possibility of his screw up but Ralph. That’s what happened. Nobody can tell me otherwise.

WHO E HUT, E HUT

Now that I’ve convinced you this is all Arnhim’s fault, the question is: Who does this debacle hurt more, from a political perspective? The ULP, who have preaching good governance, transparency and “lifting the game” to a skeptical public, or the NDP, the party billing itself to an equally doubtful SVG as the more effective stewards of the economy?

That’s easy.

The NDP get one shot per year at having 10 hours of nationally-televised criticism of the government. They used a mere 2 of those 10 hours. If d’Comrade calls the election before next year, as many assume, that would’ve been their last, best chance to mount such a sustained Parliamentary assault on the Government agenda.

To pass that up is political insanity.

First, if Arnhim wasn’t inclined to use all four his time, he could’ve let someone else open the batting (You think Linton wouldn’t want to expound for four hours? How about Cummings?) But even if he wanted to sit down after only two hours, don’t you think he should’ve given his team an advance heads-up? If he’s simply said to them that morning: “Guys, I’m only gonna talk ‘til about 11:00am, makes sure one of you is ready to step up if none of the copybooks take the floor” – you can bet your bottom dollar that the debate would’ve run all the way to Friday.

This is a 2000-year old principle

Second, it’s like Tomas More said in A Man for All Seasons:

The maxim is "Qui tacet consentire": the maxim of the law is "Silence gives consent". If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented.

In other words: During the Budget, speak now or forever hold your peace. You have not objected to anything in the Budget. You didn’t even stick around to vote against it. Silence is consent. Every time the NDP raises a budgetary issue or query, the ULP rejoinder will be “Oh? You raising that issue now? Why didn’t you raise it during the Budget?” And what can you do at that point? Make some effete call for “mature, reasoned debate”, like Gonsalves Jr. and the wannabe-philosophical crowd? Or bow your head, lick your wounds, and mutter “Arnhim really screwed this up” to yourself?

You decide.

C.O.P: SMALL BRAINED, BUT WELL HUNG

Every day, I can count on at least two new email messages in my inbox. One is an offer to make my penis bigger, harder, or improve my sexual stamina. The second is an unsolicited request from some African nation for money. Maybe I’ve won the lottery. Maybe someone left me millions in a will. Maybe the descendants of some billionaire or former despot need my account number to transfer their ill-gotten gains. Sometimes, millions in African oil money will flood my bank account if I just wire an initial “processing fee” to some remote corner of the Motherland.

Despite all these generous offers, I still have a tiny penis and an empty bank account. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, I'm not a smart man, but I know what a scam is.

Evidently, our esteemed Chief of Police is not a smart man.

National embarrassment. National joke. National outrage. Take your pick. They’re all accurate. Our highest-ranking police officer taken in by a common Internet hoax? Sending money off to Senegal VIA WESTERN UNION for. . . what? The details of the story are too stupid to waste time recounting. In fact, even if he hadn’t been scammed, he’d still have to explain to the Vincentian public why he was paying good money to traipse off to some non-essential shindig in Senegal when the economy is still sputtering back to life.

The Chief of Police has offered to repay the taxpayers’ money that he wired off to the international scammers. Good. But, really, that’s not nearly enough. He must be punished. Maybe not fired (maybe), but definitely punished. He has embarrassed the country and brought the entire police force into disrepute. Him paying the money back is a given. It’s expected. But he needs a penalty beyond that. And, going forward, the discretionary spending of the Chief of Police needs independent oversight. He can’t be trusted with any degree of fiscal autonomy.

I bet he has a huge penis, though.

JULES RULES

The best thing to happen to the NDP since they lost the elections happened last week when they announced that Jules Ferdinand would be their party’s standard-bearer in West St. George for the next General Elections. In the 2010 elections, the seat was contested by Vynette Fredrick, my favourite source of unending political comedy. Vynette was replaced, briefly, by Anesia Baptiste, the caretaker who dealt her party such a vicious body blow of dissent and discord that it has yet to fully recover.

Upgrading from Vynette/Anesia to Jules is a quantum leap in quality. I’m not a fan of his newspaper column, but he has a great resumé and a solid reputation. He is better known, better qualified, has a better temperament, is more mature, more people friendly and better respected than any other mainland NDP candidate not named Arnhim Eustace.

That should scare two sets of people.

First, it should scare the shit out of the ULP and Cess McKie. Cess is a people person, much beloved in his constituency. Of the new elected representatives in Parliament, he may be doing the best job (you could persuade me that Saboto is doing the best of the newbies). But while Cess is a great guy, he hasn’t yet have to prove that he’s a great campaigner. The NDP gifted him the seat in 2010 by running an unelectable Vynette, and he coasted to victory. Facing the potential of an equally unelectable Anesia, Cess was still coasting.

Jules is a different kettle of fish. While the St. Georges constituencies still lean ULP, like the entire Windward side of St. Vincent, Jules is a serious and credible challenger. Cess has to sit up and take notice. Expect a reinvigorated Cess for the next three years in West St. George, or he is toast.

The ULP, too, has to worry. They have no margin for error, no seats to lose if they want to remain in government next time around. As much as its detractors branded it as Encyclopaedia Ralph and 14 copybooks, the ULP team was fresher, better qualified, and more impressive than the NDP’s sad sack team of election also-rans. Outside of Arnhim and Friday, the NDP ran some real dregs, or candidates with astronomically high negatives in the public view. Jules changes that dynamic somewhat. Jules is an old guy, but he’s a fresh face politically. He’s a good catch for the NDP, which must give the ULP pause. They can’t afford for him to unseat Cess. But more than that, they can’t afford him to give the NDP ticket any semblance of national credibility.

The second set of people that need to worry are the current NDP pretenders to Arnhim’s tattered throne. For the last 5+ years, the debate has been on the relative merits of Lewis, Leacock or Friday as the next leader of the NDP. If Jules wins his seat, they can kiss their aspirations goodbye. Whether or not NDP forms government in the next election, the next leader of the NDP would be Jules – as long as he can snare his seat.

That realisation must keep Linton and Leacock up at night.

THE KENTON EFFECT? SEARCHLIGHT’S RIGHTWARD SLANT

Rightly or wrongly, Searchlight has been viewed as the most ULP-friendly of our three major newspapers. With Bassy Alexander, Adrian Frasier and others writing weekly anti-government columns for Searchlight, you could never accuse them of being a government mouthpiece, but you could definitely sense that they gave the government more “fair and balanced” coverage than, say, the hysterically anti-ULP News newspaper.

I’ve always been partial to Searchlight. Its news articles are generally better written and better edited than The Vincentian, and it is just better to look at. The News, for me, is unattractive visually and unreadable editorially. For me, the Searchlight is SVG’s paper of record, as the New York Times (also accused of a liberal bias) is to the USA.

So as a Searchlight connoisseur, I’ve noticed a marked rightward slant in the subject and tone of its recent coverage. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the paper is giving more, and more favourable coverage to the opposition of late than it is to the political arm of the government.

The Searchlight’s rightward shift, not coincidentally, coincides with the return of Assistant Editor Kenton Chance from his studies in Taiwan, and the mothballing of Kenton’s own excellent, but NDP-leaning I-Witness-News website.

To make sure I wasn’t just imagining this shift, I did a little (totally non-scientific) experiment. I went home and picked up all the Searchlights I could find lying around my house (for some unknown reason most of them congregated within 3 feet of my toilet). Then I picked up 10 issues that were published before Kenton’s July 15, 2012 return to the Searchlight and 10 issues that were published after.

I (quickly) flipped through the pages and counted (1) every news article that featured the ULP or any of the political leadership of the ULP (i.e. not non-elected, civil-servant government types); and (2) every article featuring the NDP or the NDP’s political leadership. I also counted how many of the “ULP” and “NDP” articles were written by Chance. Here’s a helpful, and totally scientific-looking table to show you what I found (click it):

As you can see, pre-Kenton and post-Kenton, there were a total of 45 “political” news articles written by the Searchlight in each period. I included as “political” articles those that simply covered statements made by Gonsalves in his capacity as Prime Minister, because I didn’t wanna get into arguments about where Gonsalves the Prime Minister ends and “The Comrade Leader” of the ULP begins.

From my non-scientific sample, you can see that, pre-Kenton, the Searchlight’s coverage was slanted 62% to 38% in favour of the ULP/Government.

Post-Kenton, the bias has flipped, to a 55% NDP vs. 45% ULP mix.

Kenton wrote 56% of the articles that prominently quoted or featured Arnhim, Leacock, Vynette and the rest of the NDP. He wrote 15% of the ULP articles.

What those numbers don’t catch is a shift in tone, as well. While not in this sample, I remember Kenton writing articles that subtly and not-too-subtly mocked the Prime Minister on multiple fronts. There was the “sleeping in the UN” article, where Kenton simply repurposed Facebook quotes of the Comrade’s rather inelegant slumber in the hallowed halls of the United Nations; there was the “vendors did well for back-to-school” article, where Kenton kicked his the article with a semi-incredulous recounting of how Ralph always seems to be getting information from little old ladies – be it Bequia ferry prices or Kingstown sales figures. Those shifts in tone can’t be captured by a chart, but its safe to say you wouldn’t have seen them in the pre-Kenton Searchlight.

To be fair, the chart doesn’t catch anti-NDP tone as well. One of the articles on the chart listed in the “NDP” column was about Vynette’s infamous Parliamentary question on mobile-phone LTE coverage – when she couldn’t explain to the House what “LTE” meant or how it worked. Hardly positive coverage.

But I’m not so interested in the numbers as in what they mean.

The fact that Kenton writes most of the NDP articles might be meaningless. Plenty of Journalists have a particular “beat,” or area of focus/specialisation. Someone might write mostly about cricket. Another may cover Diaspora events.  Dayle Dasilva, for example, is probably the anti-Kenton at Searchlight. You could argue that Dayle has the “government” beat, because more of his articles report on what the Prime Minister or other Government Ministers said.

Of course, if Dayle Dasilva has the “government beat,” he should be covering potential government scandals, right? But whenever the potential for scandal raises its head, Kenton switches sides and starts seeking out Government information and officials. On the Green Party accusations that Gonsalves was padding his salary; on the Bigger Biggs brouhaha at Rabbaca; on the horribly manufactured “passport destruction scandal,” Dasilva was brushed aside so that Kenton could aggressively probe the state machinery.

Again though, that may be no big deal. Kenton may be a better investigative reporter. And investigative reporters, by and large, will be investigating the government.

Journalistic balance is a good thing. A great thing, actually. So Searchlight can’t be faulted for striving for more balanced coverage. And maybe my sample of papers isn’t accurately reflective of coverage trends over a longer or more complete period. I'm not wedded to these numbers. That said, a 20% swing away from the pro-government coverage by the supposedly pro-government paper is important. And it raises some important questions, like:

#1 – Is Searchlight’s new centralism simply reflective of Kenton’s known personal biases and influential editorial position? If you take a gander at Kenton’s Master’s Thesis on radio broadcast deregulation and democracy in SVG, you’ll be struck by the fact that his sources are primarily a who’s who of the NDP (Adrian Fraser, Dougie De Freitas, EG Lynch, James Mitchell, Kenneth John, Nicole Sylvester). Also we know, from the famous WikiLeak, that Kenton eagerly told the US Embassy’s diplomaticpersonnel he was no supporter of the ULP. No problem with that, support who you want (though, Kenton, maybe you need to be careful how much personal info you, as a journalist, share with foreign operatives). But as a non-ULP supporter with an NDP-influenced worldview, working as an Assistant Editor at a supposedly pro-ULP paper, he may have single-handedly shifted the paper’s day-to-day tone, and changed the balance of our national political discourse with it. If the Searchlight’s shift is real, then the newspaper universe will consist of the centrist Vincentian newspaper, the now NDP-leaning Searchlight, and The News, which is so wildly pro-NDP that its editor Shelley Clarke was quoted in that same Wikileak as begging the US Government to fund the NDP’s election efforts and/or get “secretly involved in the nation’s internalaffairs” with a view to deposing the ULP.

Hmmmm. . .

#2 – Is this much ado about nothing? Maybe. It may just be a cyclical news cycle. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the opposition is in the news more than the government. Sometimes news values demand such coverage. For example, one of the Searchlight issues that I randomly grabbed was published at the height of Anesia Baptiste’s scandalous expulsion from the NDP. Of course, the press covers that. Another issue hit the street when the US Ambassador was in town to hand over new coast guard vessels to the government. Again, the press would be expected to report on this event, and what the Prime Minister said in front of his American benefactor. Maybe, just maybe, the news cycle is dictating Searchlight’s shift. I don’t think it is, but it’s a completely credible and plausible argument.

#3 – Is this just lazy journalism? I’ve bitched before about the sorry state of so-called journalism in SVG, and I’ll refrain from beating that tired old drum again much today. Suffice it to say that, when you take out the articles from the empty blowhards who pose as columnists, and the sports news, and the court reporting, there is precious little news left (Except for the regular “Mr./Ms so-and-so is tired of people saying he/she has AIDS. Here is a photo of his/her AIDS test results!” High comedy). With regard to political news, the articles are limited basic, sorry, one-sided reporting of the following four different varieties: (1) Something Ralph/ULP said; or (2) Something Arnhim/NDP said; or (3) Something someone said on a radio programme; or, increasingly, (4) Something someone wrote on Facebook.

No fact-checking, no attempts to get the other side of the story, no investigation. Just he said, she said, or someone else said. Anyway, I digress.

Let’s assume that Searchlight is typical of other newspapers in SVG – that is, filled with lazy, semi-competent journalists. And let us assume that Editor in Chief Claire Keizer decides to print the paper twice a week instead of following the once-every-Friday pattern of The News and The Vincentian. Well, if you’re a lazy journalist whose workload has just doubled, and you were already fully reporting what RALPH said. . . then the only option is to start reporting what other people are saying, too. Not because of any ideological shift, but because the easiest thing to do is to sit in your office with the AC on and listen to either Star FM or Nice Radio.

If that’s what’s going on here, I’m depressed.

#4 – Is it a calculated Editorial shift? For all my talk of Kenton’s influence, the fact is that he isn’t running the paper (nor am I accusing him of any sinister Machiavellian plot to bias news coverage. He's a human being, and all humans have natural biases). Kenton is not the Editor-in-Chief. He’s the Assistant Editor. So, let’s not make the buck stop at the Assistant Editor’s desk. Is Claire Keizer aware of, and on board with, her publication’s rightward tilt?

If she is, then the follow-up question would be, why? Have her political views changed? Have the views of her readership changed? Of her advertisers? Is she sensing a shift in the political winds?

If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” then the ULP is going to have problems getting its message out in the years leading up to the next election. And while it’s relatively cheap to create a Star FM to counter a bourgeois, right-leaning broadcast media; it ain’t cheap or easy to make a political party newspaper. Ask Arnhim Eustace, who, for all his supposed economic brilliance and business acumen, created an NDP newspaper so short-lived that no one remembers it.