By A Concerned Laborite
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s experience with protesting pensioners outside of his office last week gave him reason to pause and reflect carefully on the extent to which he is trusted as the leader he boldly professes to be.
When he came out of his office to talk to the protesters, he no doubt thought it was going to be as easy as a Saturday afternoon on his Radio Station denigrating and belittling Asot Michael and other comrades to beat his chest as the self-proclaimed champion of integrity in governance and the moral authority on people centered leadership in Antigua and Barbuda.
Perhaps he was not quite prepared for what happened. He was supposed to speak to the protesters, feed them a concoction of self-serving propaganda and shut them up just like he bullies his comrades in the leadership of the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party and his Cabinet colleagues into silence every time questions are raised over his stewardship.
It didn’t work that way. The Prime Minister crashed straight into a brick wall of resistance to his explanation for the late payment of pensions over the past few months. As the pressure came down, his initial measured response defaulted to signature arrogance, aggression and contempt. He tried to claim victimization at the hands of opposition agitators. But the protestors stared him down and pushed back hard as he reeled off his vile, pompous rant intended to intimidate them into submission. They were having none of it. He was booed, ridiculed and humiliated into beating a hasty retreat back to his office.
As chilling as this lesson should be for a wannabe dictator, the significance of it would certainly be lost on this legend in his own mind convinced that his intellectual prowess is beyond the reach of Antiguans and Barbudans who therefore have no choice but to kneel before him and do exactly as he tells them to do.
While that may be the case more and more in certain quarters of the ABLP and in his Cabinet of Ministers, it certainly does not reflect reality across the country. The Prime Minister should take note that notwithstanding all his smooth talk about good corporate governance for the people, the evidence keeps rising that the people do not trust him. What he says is not what he does. The hypocrisy and double standards come and go as night follows day. And the people are seeing right through them.
For example, the people are witnessing a live demonstration of different applications of the Gaston Browne disciplinary standard for members of Cabinet who have issues with the law. On one hand he is planning for more than three years to remove an MP who has not been charged for any offense from the ABLP slate of candidates for the next general election. On the other hand, he is advocating support for an ABLP MP and Cabinet Minister charged with a serious criminal offense.
The people know that the issue of late payment to pensioners has less to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and lot more to do with corrupt mismanagement of public funds through the years that weaken the country’s financial position by allowing privileged providers of goods and services to the state to get much more than the market value of those services.
They also know that the Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet who expect pensioners to be quiet about not receiving monthly payments in a timely manner, have not missed a paycheck since the COVID-19 pandemic. It is widely known too that the financial difficulties plaguing social security, precede COVID-19.
So, the excuses put forward by the Prime Minister were too hollow to be taken seriously and the protesters dismissed them as contemptuously as the Prime Minister himself was seeking to shut them up.
More importantly, the protesters made it clear to the Prime Minister that as sons and daughters of Antigua and Barbuda, they are not afraid of him; he is their servant and not their master; and he must therefore behave himself accordingly.
They were equally clear that the people of Antigua and Barbuda do not like dictators and will deal decisively with any attempt by anyone to curtail their democratic rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution.
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