In over a year of running Barbados Free Press, we haven’t heard a squeak from the PEP – Peoples Empowerment Party. We don’t think they have a website, and we’re not sure they even have email as this press release reached us second hand and doesn’t indicate either a website or an email address.
You know what we think folks – the more talk the better it is for democracy, so despite the fact that the PEP calls the BLP the party of the “white elites” and sounds more like a document from the “workers’ paradise” of the USSR, here is a PEP press release we received second hand.
Side Note To The Peoples Empowerment Party…
1/ You can get a free email address from Hotmail, and a free website from WordPress.com. You don’t even have to have a computer – any of the local internet cafes would be happy to rent you some time.
2/ Shouldn’t “Peoples” be “Peoples’ ” with the possessive? 🙂
3/ I guess your supporters shouldn’t count on you to form the next government just yet.
PEOPLES EMPOWERMENT PARTY
PRESS RELEASE
Hold B.L.P Responsible For World Cup Failure!
The looming failure of the “Cricket World Cup” is the collective responsibility of the CARICOM governments, including our Barbados Labour Party government, the “big wigs” of the various “Local Organizing Committees”, and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
It is therefore insulting and offensive for B.L.P Government Ministers to be now seeking to run from their fair share of the blame.
Wasn’t it our Prime Minister Owen Arthur who declared that he was assuming personal responsibility for Barbados’ participation in the World Cup and that he was prepared to “move heaven and earth” if necessary? Didn’t this B.L.P Government invest hundreds of millions of our tax dollars in “their” World Cup project without ever once consulting us, the ordinary citizens of Barbados?
Didn’t they encourage us to get into debt for the purpose of building new rooms and apartments unto our houses in order to accommodate the promised tens of thousands of wealthy visitors?
How can the Barbados Labour Party Government now say that it is not responsible for the unfolding fiasco?
Virtually every decision that the B.L.P government and their cohorts made about the “World Cup” was wrong!
Their decision to demolish our unique and historic Kensington Oval, and to saddle us with a debt of hundreds of millions of dollars was wrong. It was wrong to establish a narrow, elitist “Local Organizing Committee” led by people like Peter Boos and to fail to include important grassroots “Cricket” organizations like the “Barbados Cricket League”.
They were wrong to snub the cricket loving “masses” of the Caribbean with a whole host of foreign, intimidating and elitist procedures and regulations covering everything from the purchase of tickets to the behaviour of spectators.
Their decision to disrespect the Caribbean people and to look outside of the Caribbean for virtually every input, ranging from the choice of a “mascot”, to the choice of our West Indies cricket coach, to the choice of Indian and Chinese contractors to build the new stadia- was wrong!
But none of this surprises us in the Peoples Empowerment Party!
This example of “mis-leadership” is typical of the new “black” bourgeois class that, throughout the Caribbean, has taken over the leadership positions in Government, the professions, and in important areas of national life such as “Cricket Administration”.
They have constituted themselves into an elite, with their own narrow group interests and a narrow self- serving value system. They consciously see themselves as “junior” partners in the international, elitist, capitalist agenda of Western Europe and North America, and are therefore psychologically predisposed to be co-opted and used by the traditional local and foreign “White” elites. They are contemptuous of the working class base from which they originally sprung, and are dismissive of the intelligence and ability of working- class people. They believe that they are entitled to monopolize national decision making, and that the appropriate role of the working class people is to be supporters and “hailers”.
The harsh reality is that many of the privileged representatives of this class are going to walk away from this Cricket World Cup as millionaires, while the masses of Barbadian and Caribbean people are left to shoulder the enormous debts for many years to come.
David A. Comissiong
President
Tel: 425 5709 (H)
235 9849 (C)
435 2334
Filed under Barbados, Cricket, Politics & Corruption
UPDATED AGAIN:
Folks, the moment we put up this article on Barbados Free Press, the new blog in question put up a YouTube video of “The Beauty In The Wild-slugs Mating”
I don’t know what point they are trying to make, but we have now pulled the website from our sidebar and have instead put up a link to The Bystander – a Bajan blog that looks like they might go the distance.
Barbados Underground has now moved their slug video to the bottom and put up an article on Mia Mottley.
We’ll check back in a few weeks and see what’s there, but for now, we will forgo the sidebar link.
Original Article as posted…
Welcome to The Barbados Underground Blog or the abbreviated version BU. We intend to focus on the news which does not usually make it through to the traditional Press because of the very old slander laws which currently exist in Barbados. Given the recent assault on the Barbados media it behooves each and every Barbadian to “speak-out”…… from the introduction to The Barbados Underground
On Thursday evening, we posted May God Bless The Folks At WordPress.com and encouraged our readers by saying “A reminder that if we can start a blog, you can too!”
It looks like someone took our message to heart, because the next evening The Barbados Underground published it’s first story.
Their first story is decidedly an anti-David Thompson piece centered around CLICO Chairman Leroy Parris as “The Man Behind Thompson: Will He Prove To Be A Liability… Yet Again?”
The second story asks questions about the CEO of Cricket World Cup Chris Dehring, and whether it is unethical that he profited from his position with CWC, and how much he has profited.
Is The Barbados Underground a BLP Blog? Is it DLP? Is it run by a Bajan whose only agenda is to expose corruption on all sides?
We don’t know, but over time readers will develop their own opinions about the character and agenda of The Barbados Underground.
Whatever the case, even if the blog has a political party behind it, we view it as healthy for Barbados and democracy.
We will list the blog on our sidebar under “Bajan Blogs & Chats”. If it turns out to be a one hit wonder with no further postings, then we will remove it. We often receive requests to list blogs on our sidebar, but many of the blogs start with some enthusiasm and then fail to continue.
We’ll see what happens to The Barbados Underground, and for now we say to them, Good luck folks… Just remember to use a proxy every time! http://www.Anonymouse.org is also helpful.
Filed under Barbados, Blogging, News Media
