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 