David Thompson Reveals DLP’s Integrity and Freedom Of Information Plans – Much Cut and Pasted From The Internet Only A Few Days Ago

Is The DLP Plan Sincere – Or A Last Minute Vote Grab?

DLP’s “A Model Freedom Of Information Law” Is Really A World Bank Document Downloaded December 15, 2007

Opposition leader David Thompson revealed the Democratic Labour Party’s plans for Integrity Legislation, Ministerial Conduct Rules and a Freedom of Information law during a media conference on Thursday. The DLP’s communications director emailed us the documents that were handed out at the conference and said that BFP would have been invited, “but” …

(Hey… no hard feelings, Mr. Eversley. Its not like we can show up with a name tag saying “BFP”)

Here is the email that arrived at BFP on Thursday afternoon Jan 3, 2008…

Hello BFP folks

Apologies for not getting back to you much sooner.

DLP leader David Thompson hosted a press conference today where he distributed the attached documents dealing with a proposed legal framework to promote accountability, transparency and accountability in public life and fight corruption.

The Ministerial Code takes effect immediately after a DLP government is elected. The Freedom of Information Act and Integrity legislation will be dealt with in the first 100 days in office.

Any questions, give me a call. If you were part of the traditional media, you would have been invited to the news conference where you could have asked whatever you wanted.

Best regards
Reudon Eversley
Communications Director
DLP General Election Campaign 2008

A Good Start – But Too Little, Too Late

The DLP sent us three documents:

1/ “The Ministerial Code – A Proposal”
2/ “A Model Freedom Of Information Law”
3/ “Principles Underlying The Legal Framework For Integrity In Public Life In Barbados”

(These documents appear in full at the bottom of this article)

Before commenting on the contents, we’re going to take the weekend to really digest these documents – but the first thing we did was to run a Google “exact words” search to see if anything had been “borrowed” by the DLP…

Zap! The DLP document “A Model Freedom Of Information Law” is word-for-word downloaded from the World Bank with not one word changed. (World Bank Word document download link here)

There is nothing wrong with that, my friends. So many countries have implemented Freedom of Information (FoI) and Integrity Laws that much of the standard wordings and concepts have been tested and revised over the years and had all the legal bugs worked out. That’s a good reason for starting with the World Bank version of an FoI – but that is only a start. Presumably a DLP government would carefully consider any changes that should be made to tailor the document for Barbados.

The other two documents also contain sections that were grabbed from the internet. You can have some fun running an “exact words” Google search using some of the sentences from the DLP documents.

How Sincere Can A Last Minute Cut & Paste Job Be?

In school it might be called plagiarism, but as we said, in the real world there is nothing wrong with the DLP basing their Integrity plans on proven wordings and concepts. We even encouraged the DLP to do this months ago – saying that the government doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel to come up with Integrity Legislation as there are plenty of working models in use by various countries.

But we do know from the information in the documents that “A Model Freedom Of Information Law” was downloaded from the World Bank website only 18 days ago on December 15, 2007.

Frankly, we expected – we hoped – for better from the DLP. For two years we have been demanding that both the BLP and the DLP implement integrity standards within their own parties and as legislation. The DLP could have, should have, shown leadership all along. They should have, could have, had the legislation all set to go.

But what we received from the DLP was a cut and paste job thrown together at the last moment just for the election.

Barbados deserved better.

Do Thompson and the DLP really mean it? Are they willing to make the very tough decisions that go hand-in-hand with integrity legislation?

We’ll have more thoughts on that later this weekend.

Hey… What About The Promise That Candidates Would Reveal Their Net Worth?

No word on Thompson’s past promise that the DLP candidates would declare their finances before election day. We weren’t at the press conference so maybe something was said there – or maybe not.

DLP Electronic Documents Reveal Who Wrote Them, Where, When And Involved Corporations

One little word of advice to the DLP Communications Director Reudon Eversley…

When you emailed electronic copies of the documents to us, you provided way more information than you intended!

We’re not going to reveal the information on BFP, but if you sent the same Word documents to anyone else then they have the same information that we have and the cat is out of the bag! Have a look at the document properties and we think you’ll see what we mean.

Owen Arthur and the gang wouldn’t be too happy to know what computer was used to put the package together. 😉

Further Reading: Nation News – DLP Makes Integrity Pledge 

Documents Distributed By DLP – January 3, 2008

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How Do You Like The Sound Of “Prime Minister Clyde Mascoll” ?

The following article was sent to BFP anonymously – probably by the DLP campaign team (or not – that’s just our guess).

Never no mind the source – it makes some good points so we’ll run with it…

BLP Leadership: Unity or Collective Greed?

The launch of the BLP campaign was a well orchestrated affair. I only found two obvious flaws in the proceedings and they were related to Clyde Mascoll.

The first was Mr Mascoll’s cry to “re-elect the Democratic Labour Party” during his address. I was astounded! I wondered whether it was a Freudian slip or a case of divine intervention; similar to the biblical tale of Lord speaking through Balaam’s donkey. Either way, at best it made it clear that Mr Mascoll is seriously confused.

The second was the deafening silence on the matter of Mr Mascoll being ‘anointed’ as the ‘co-leader’ of the BLP. Please don’t tell me that this is yet another case of the Nation and Advocate newspapers both inaccurately recording yet another statement by Mr Arthur.

Barbados can you imagine it! Mr Arthur ‘anointed’ Clyde Mascoll to be ‘co-leader’ of the BLP. This means if he wins the next election look for PM Mascoll in the near future.

People, forget Reggie, forget Mia, forget Liz, forget Billie; Mr Arthur has gone for “Malik wid teet”, to use a term of endearment coined by one of his Cabinet colleagues.

And what of Mr Arthur, you ask? You think him foolish? He is going to be President! You say this is a conspiracy theory? Did you hear Mr Arthur last night? The only leader he could find to compare himself to, was Fidel Castro.

And imagine not a word on the ‘co-leader’ Wednesday night at the BLP meeting! It was like a TV episode of the “Twilight Zone” (under 40s will have to do a Google search on this to get the analogy). And what should we make of the silence, is this a united front? I suggest that it is a blatant case of collective greed!

Much was made of Mr Thompson’s reported comments, that if you are on the football field and a decision was made and you did not like it, then you should walk off, to explain the reason for his walk out of the House. The BLP vehemently objected to this comment and we now know why….

The BLP’s objection is not based on principle but on the fact, as demonstrated in the anointing of Mr Mascoll, they cannot walk off; and Mr Arthur knows it. It is the most obvious case of “i f you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”.

Mr Arthur knows that those of his parliamentary team who don’t want money, want power and he knows that he is their meal ticket. Mr Arthur also knows that despite their obvious contempt for him, the ‘negrocrats’ in his party need this “poor boy from Rose Hill” to win back government. And he is rubbing it in their face.

In his quest to rid Barbados’ political landscape of ‘negrocrats’ Mr Mascoll has become Mr Arthur’s comrade in arms. His heir apparent! While this social engineering agenda is commendable in principle, what does it tell us about the leadership of the BLP, especially when we are told “leadership matters most” in this election?

Mr Arthur, in foisting his ‘co-leader’ onto the BLP, has demonstrated that the spirit of greed as captured in the1985 calypso by John King, “I want a Plantation” is alive and well in his Party. Mr Arthur gambled on his colleagues’ desire, at any cost, for the people of Barbados to continue to call them ‘master’, call them ‘boss’ and their common commitment never to be poor again.

Mr Arthur has exposed that the leadership of the Barbados Labour Party is not united by philosophy, or vision, or love but by collective greed.

In 1994, when Mr Sandiford’s authoritarianism loomed large, four DLP backbenchers joined with the BLP in a vote of no-confidence against him. These men of morals and conscience, these great sons of Barbados knew that it was better that they should die for the people, than the whole nation should perish. These were God fearing, decent men who put their country before party.

Can the members of the BLP, after the ‘Hardwood’ scandal which demonstrated Mr Mascoll’s incompetence, put Mr Arthur’s personal political agenda to anoint Mr Mascoll ahead of Barbados? The evidence suggests that the answer is a clear ‘yes’.

It is ironic, that in such a short period of time Mr Mascoll could create such political confusion in the BLP. Finally, they understand that many of the problems that Mr Thompson faced over the years were not of his making but, even then, the consequence of the actions of Mr Arthur’s political marionette, Clyde Mascoll. But he is now their problem to deal with. I wish them well.

Mr Arthur, the Dees didn’t want Mr Mascoll, the Bees don’t want Mr Mascoll. Who are you to anoint him as the de facto leader of Barbados? This is not Camelot and you are no king to impose him on us!

It is obvious that the collective greed of the BLP candidates outweighs any sense of personal ethics, loyalty to party and most damningly, commitment to this country. The BLP team of political ‘paros’ is unable to say ‘no’ to Mr Arthur’s power fix.

In this election, I agree that leadership matters most. The BLP has shown it doesn’t have a team with the honesty and integrity to challenge Mr Arthur’s leadership vision for Barbados which is “Malik wid teet”.

We must depend on Mr Thompson to once and for all rid us of this political parasite.

To the BLP all we can say is: Goodbye, Farewell, Amen.

John Q Public

Two Texas Girls Murdered By Father In Muslim Honour Killing

Sarah & Amina Said – Shot To Death By Father – “Talked to Boys”

Sarah Said was 17 years old. Her sister Amina was 18. Friends say their father murdered them on New Year’s day because Sarah had talked to a boy at her part-time job. The father is from Egypt where what he did is not considered murder, but a father’s right.

We often think that everyone wants the same things in life. This is just another reminder that not everyone shares the same values, and that some cultural values and standards may not be compatible with a free and democratic society.

Texas Star-Telegram – Story here