Correction: Call-In Show Was Sunday: CWC’s Chris Dehring & Chris de Caires, plus Grenada PM Mitchell, Journalist Patrick Hoyos

Correction: The Call-In Show Was On Sunday Night Past

Hi folks, we got the date wrong when we first posted this article and the call show had already taken place the night before. See the comments section for a few words from our readers who heard the show. Well, we never said we were perfect, but gosh darn it – we can’t find anyone to blame but ourselves!

Original Article …

Will The Call-In Questions Be Staged?

Cricket World Cup CEO Chris Dehring and Chairman of the Barbados Local Organising Committee Chris de Caires will appear live tonight on Carib Vision’s “At The Wicket” from 8pm to 9pm ECT. Journalist Patrick Hoyos will also be on the program and Prime Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada will be on the phone. Andrew Sealy will moderate.

There is to be a call-in segment, but as the show is only an hour long, we hope that the questions won’t be a staged 10 minutes at the end or some other nonsense.

Patrick Hoyos is a straight shooter, but with so much at stake it remains to be seen whether he will be able to speak freely or not, and he won’t have anything to do with picking the callers who get to air.

After all, the government has just used David Ellis to give a lesson to the Barbados media as to what happens if a journalist is too effective. Expect to hear lots of “beeeeeeeeeeep” sounds and strange periods of silence in tonight’s show.

Broad Street Journal – “Minister of Tourism Noel Lynch Could Not Admit In Public That CWC Is An Economic Nightmare”

Check out Patrick Hoyos’ new article Hit For Six at The Broad Street Journal. Here are some excerpts…

Last weekend Minister of Tourism Noel Lynch could not bring himself to publicly admit what his government must be in private – that the whole thing has become an economic nightmare for all of us in the Caribbean – even as he announced what amounts to a last ditch effort to persuade cricket fans in some parts of the world to jump on a charter at the last minute and come down to Barbados for the final. I believe he mentioned Ireland and Australia. He might as well try Japan (they play baseball)…

Economically, we are being hit for six, way beyond the boundary, well out of the brand new parks we will be paying for (in one way of the other) to showcase our love for the game to the world…

The irony is that, after putting the Caribbean people through their well thought-out cricket maze designed to ensure the local rabble only a few seats at the CWC holy grail, not only through pricing, but the lottery system, the ICC is now desperately encouraging locals to fill the empty stadia seats, even to the point where Malcolm Speed said the government should pay for all the schoolchildren to attend.

… excerpts from Hit For Six at The Broad Street Journal (full story here)

Thanks to Bajan Reporter for the heads up on tonight’s TV show. Ian Bourne has also posted some hot-off-the-press kissy-kissy lovey-dove photos of Prince Henry watching cricket. Yup… that’s how cricket should be watched alright!

DLP candidate calls for Minister of Tourism, Noel Lynch to resign!

“Minister Lynch Failed In His Duties…”

In the Daily Nation today, Monday 9th April 2007, Donville Inniss, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) candidate for St. James South, stated that ‘the Minister had failed in his duties regarding the planning for Cricket World Cup (CWC) events in Barbados’. (See The Nation News link here)

Does he have a point?

It would appear he has several!

The Minister has up until just a week ago consistently misled the public and the entire tourism industry, even when challenged, regarding the true anticipated arrival numbers both by plane and cruise ship.

When asked about the much discussed US$15 million loan from the Bank of Nova Scotia to charter Carnival Destiny, he publicly stated there was no such arrangement.

Despite records showing that no less than the Prime Minister had submitted the proposal to Parliament back in November 2006 and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism quoted details of the loan to the media.

The Minister of Tourism has also been at pains to distant himself from the decision process that has led to what can only been described as disastrous crowd attendance to the games so far and low occupancy levels at many of our hotels leading up to the games in our critical peak season.

Without doubt the late implementation of a special CariCom visa has certainly played its part in visitor arrival numbers, together with the delays in arranging processing offices in the key markets.

When, chairperson responsible for its implementation, Deputy Prime Minister, Mia Motley, responded to criticisms regarding visa issuance she stated ‘that an emergency meeting was convened in November 2006 in Georgetown, and of the ten Ministers of Tourism representing the participating countries summoned, only two turned-up’

Was Minister Lynch one of those two?

Even if the week of the CWC final boosts hotel occupancy levels, it is going to take years to recoup the loss of revenue for the preceding period.

Again, despite The Ministers personal involvement in the merger of LIAT and Caribbean Star and his public pronouncements that intra Caribbean airfares will remain affordable, we are actually witnessing the highest intra regional airfares in history.

In some cases the cost per flown mile has risen to 50 cents (US$) per mile, almost three times the cost of reaching Great Britain or North America.

Even up until a little more than a week ago, the Minister was repeating that Carnival Destiny had ‘80%’ of its cabins ‘sold’.

With just days to go, we are now told that figure is only ‘40%’ leaving the taxpayer with a massive liability and in reality subsidising these empty cabins to the tune of over US$1,100 per night.

The “75,000 cruise ship passengers” that will be berthed in the Bridgetown Port for CWC final week now appears to be a more realistic 25,000 and that is if each and every ship is full to capacity.

And the ’90,000’ long stay visitors that will also be here for the final week is a figure that just about every tourism industry player cannot reconcile, as the Minister pointed out, we only have about 6,000 available rooms.

Even if you add all the various sectors and include villa rooms, unregistered and home accommodation, our total room stock is still only around 8,500.

So where are these other 73,000 going to stay?

The question that has to be asked now is does the Minister have sufficiently credibility left to maintain the respect and co-operation of the tourism industry players?

Perhaps Barbados Free Press readers can offer their views.

Adrian Loveridge
9th April 2007

Barbados Advocate: “Barbados situation is nowhere near as dire as what is happening in Zimbabwe”

Nicholas Cox Writes A Truly Disturbing Article

My friends, I don’t know what to think about today’s article in the Barbados Advocate, Barbados Is No Zimbabwe.

Is Nicholas Cox defending the government? Is he making a plea to the world for help about government oppression of the media in Barbados? Or is he slyly doing both?

On one side, I am astounded that those in power would allow the Barbados Advocate to mention the fact that citizens in daily conversations are comparing Prime Minister Arthur to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. This has been happening increasingly in street conversations for about the last six months or so, but rapidly escalated with the government clampdown on Voice of Barbados Radio after talkshow host David Ellis made the mistake of asking Minister of Tourism Noel Lynch about his assets and integrity legislation. (See BFP’s articles Corruption Stories Being Hidden By Barbados Media & Government and also Barbados Government Blog Publishes Threats Against Journalist David Ellis)

Today’s article rightly points out that Mugabe is using murder, violence and threats of violence to silence the media and political opposition and that Barbados cannot be compared with Zimbabwe in this regard – but the article does compare the two countries in context, saying…

Whatever concerns Barbadians have about issues such as freedom of the press, transparency, and accountability of public officials, it is fair to say that the situation is nowhere near as dire as what is happening in Zimbabwe. Yes, many in Barbados, including myself, support the implementation of laws to facilitate the aforementioned issues, but to date, as a journalist, I have not been beaten to a pulp or threatened for voicing these opinions, as is likely to happen in Zimbabwe.

… David Cox in the Barbados Advocate.

“Nowhere Near As Dire As What Is Happening In Zimbabwe”

What an astounding statement to be printed by the Barbados Advocate!

Nicholas Cox is correct, the situation in Barbados is “nowhere near as dire as what is happening in Zimbabwe” but neither is everything just fine and dandy either. By the end of the article, Cox leaves the door open for the reader to assume that he believes a Zimbabwe situation is not out of the realm of possibility in Barbados…

“…if Barbados or any other government in the region decides to follow a similar path of oppression and intimidation, hopefully world leaders will condemn this as well, in the interest of the people that are suffering.”

Cox also throws a few bones to the government censors by saying…

“Furthermore, we should not use the issues that will undoubtedly be raised in a democratic country like Barbados, where at least there is the power to question and uncover the aforementioned problems, as well as free and fair elections, to make light of the rapidly deteriorating situation because of the dictatorship in Zimbabwe.”

“Free and Fair Elections” ????

As an experienced journalist, Nicholas Cox is well aware of the vote-buying and ballot-box stuffing that goes on in Barbados. He knows that the government unethically and unfairly put it’s new candidate Jeffrey Bostic in charge of a programme to hand out millions of dollars of free home renovations. He knows that we have no campaign finance laws and the the Prime Minister was recently caught depositing a $750,000 payoff, oops “campaign donation”, into his personal bank account.

Cox knows all these things and more. He knows that for the last 13 years, the Barbados Advocate has not published even one serious article of investigative reporting on Barbados political corruption. His paper didn’t even mention the three-quarters of a million dollar cheque that the Prime Minister put into his personal bank account, even though the information was revealed publicaly in Parliament and the Prime Minister admitted to it.

In the end, what I find so disturbing about the article in the Barbados Advocate is that Nicholas Cox is correct – one cannot compare what is happening in Barbados with what is currently happening in Zimbabwe.

But one can certainly compare what is happening in Barbados now with events at the beginning of Mugabe’s reign. It all started in Zimbabwe with repression of free speech in the media, intimidation of journalists through lawsuits and forced public “apologies”, newspaper editors being “advised” to fire columnists… until the media became silent about blatant corruption by government officials.

And it escalated from there.

We have all those conditions in place here in Barbados.

Journalists are intimidated. Columnists have been fired upon government “advice”, and citizens fear to speak out about obvious corruption of government officials. To ask a government minister how it is that his personal assets are so at odds with his salary is to have the full wrath of government descend upon the journalist and his media organization.

No… Barbados isn’t Zimbabwe, but it is how Zimbabwe once was.

Barbados Is No Zimbabwe

Barbados Advocate, April 9, 2007

Nicolas Cox

In recent weeks, in unofficial circles, there have been numerous comparisons between the socio-political situation in Barbados with that of the African nation of Zimbabwe.

These critics see Barbados as a mini-dictatorship heading in the same direction as Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, and this is mainly based on the power, or lack thereof, of the media to question public officials issues like corruption.

Whatever concerns Barbadians have about issues such as freedom of the press, transparency, and accountability of public officials, it is fair to say that the situation is nowhere near as dire as what is happening in Zimbabwe. Yes, many in Barbados, including myself, support the implementation of laws to facilitate the aforementioned issues, but to date, as a journalist, I have not been beaten to a pulp or threatened for voicing these opinions, as is likely to happen in Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, we should not use the issues that will undoubtedly be raised in a democratic country like Barbados, where at least there is the power to question and uncover the aforementioned problems, as well as free and fair elections, to make light of the rapidly deteriorating situation because of the dictatorship in Zimbabwe.

Over the last few weeks, opposition members in Zimbabwe have been beaten and threatened and at least one journalist killed for daring to act out against Mugabe’s regime. According to an article in the New York Times yesterday, “The main faction of the leading opposition group, the Movement for Democratic Change, says that at least 500 of its members have been attacked in the last month. The number of attacks on civic advocates and other opposition figures is less clear but appears substantial.”

Some of those attacked are left with fractured skulls or broken limbs. A few have been shot. At least one has been killed: a week ago, a 65-year-old former cameraman for the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation was found bludgeoned to death in a field 50 miles from his home in Glenview, a south Harare slum that is a locus of anti-government sentiment. He was rumoured to have sold a videotape showing anti-government protestors being assaulted by police to foreign broadcasters.

I have been criticised in the past, by a local pan-Africanist who was unapologetic for supporting Mugabe, for receiving information about Zimbabwe from biased Western sources that only seek to portray the country in a negative light. However, I believe it is clear that the Mugabe government is going to extreme and inhumane lengths to stifle any opposition it faces.

The longer this situation is allowed to continue, the worse it will become. With only a vague mention of the incidents coming from South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, and no official condemnation from the African Union, it is time for leaders in the this part of the world to speak out against Mugabe’s dictatorial actions. In this vein, if Barbados or any other government in the region decides to follow a similar path of oppression and intimidation, hopefully world leaders will condemn this as well, in the interest of the people that are suffering.

… while you can, read the original article online at The Barbados Advocate (link here). The Barbados Advocate removes online articles after a short time and keeps no public archives.

New Cricket World Cup Strategy – Sell The Same Tickets Twice!

There are so many “no-shows” from abroad who still hold tickets that Cricket World Cup organisers are going to try and guess who is going to show up and who is not and then resell the tickets.

This should make for some good fist fights in the stands if they guess wrong.

Then again, there is always another empty seat somewhere. Well, that sure makes me want to rush out and buy a ticket!

From The Nation News…

New Guard

CRICKET WORLD CUP (CWC) organisers are considering reissuing tickets that were previously sold in an effort to beef up spectator attendance for the remainder of the event.

Prompted by a large percentage of no-shows, last-minute cancellations from Indian and Pakistan fans, and a desire to strengthen the Caribbean flavour at grounds, officials are set to make further tickets available for Super 8 matches in Barbados and Grenada.

“It’s all part of a general look at how we get these stadia better attended,” CWC managing director and chief executive officer Chris Dehring told the DAILY NATION at the Vivian Richards Cricket Ground yesterday…

… continue reading this article at The Nation News (link here)

DLP Strategy Or Rumour Mischief?

We received this anonymous email this morning that may, or may not, be true insofar as claiming to have inside knowledge about what Thompson and the DLP have been advised by consultants.

But never mind whether that part is true or not. What about the accuracy of the overall political assessment?

Here it is…

Horns of a dilemma

David Thompson is being advised by international political strategists [whom he consulted] not to aggressively go after the top job in Barbados at this time.

The reason? He will be inheriting an economic nightmare according to sources close to the IMS. The Honorable Owing Arthur and his administration took a gamble, which has not paid off. The declining U.S. dollar and the emerging powers in Asia…mainly South East Asia was not factored into his {Arthur’s] strategic plan.

Also industrialized nations are seeking higher taxes from companies who are banking in offshore islands. Barbados will here fore see a decline in such monies.

David Thompson is being advised to sit tight for another term after which he will be guaranteed pretty well a landslide.

Pretty Girl, Pretty Girl, Pretty Girl – Oh, She Also Blogs…

I Don’t Mean To Be So Shallow, But She Is Pretty…

Outside my window, the wind is whipping the snow into little white tornadoes that come and go across the dormitory parking lot. My room is cold. There is an Easter party in “the commons” featuring the movie “The Blues Brothers”.

The Blues Brothers for Easter.

Jesus wept.

Two more weeks and one more term paper and I can come home.

For those who sent their encouragement and admonishment – thank you. I needed both. The bottle of rum remains unopened atop the rattling “Westinghouse” refrigerator in the corner of my little “bachelor” apartment. The refrigerator is a horrible peacock blue and must have been here when the National Guard held target practice at Kent State.

McDonald’s downtown, Saturday afternoon: “You want fries with that, HUH?”

“… HUH?”

Dear God, get me back to Barbados!

Two more weeks.

Mail duty tonight for Barbados Free Press. I logged on and there she was … Caribbean Lionesse. A blogger from Barbados who appears to be a professional journalist – musing about the interaction between blogs and the traditional media.

The girl sure can write, and I really do her a disservice by mentioning how pretty she is, but I can’t help it.

I miss home. Two more weeks.

Value of this whiny, complaint post to the reader – Questionable.

Value of this whiny, complaint post to the writer – Immeasurable.

Cliverton

Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur’s Retirement Plan

… with apologies and greetings to the Jamaica Observer