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SUNDAY CHRONICLE December 22, 2013
Spectre of devaluation in Barbados economic crisis
- weekend of frenzied talks
Analysis by Rickey Singh -- many of them teachers working for years without confirmation -- are most vulnerable to the planned job cuts. A crucial meeting is scheduled for tomorrow between government and NUPW’s representatives on counterproposals to the announced 3,000 job cuts. Both government ministers and strategists of the governing DLP, as well as representatives of various trade unions and private sector enterprises, were scheduled to be engaged in separate meetings over this weekend to assess alternatives to the looming crisis. SURPRISES
PRIME MINISTER FREUNDEL STUART
Earlier in the week, surprises were the order of the day as Barbadians were digesting the negative consequences of the government’s IMF-influenced economic management programme
for 2014. The biggest surprise, of course, was that of December 13, deemed “Black Friday” by the Barbados “Daily Nation”, when Finance Minister Chris Sinckler made his shock announcement that some 3,000 public sector workers were to be affected for the first quarter in 2014 in view of very serious fiscal challenges facing the government, and the need to avoid devaluation of the Barbados dollar. What made that gloomy announcement even more depressing was the disclosure by representatives of the private sector and labour movement -- including, most significantly, the NUPW -- that they had not benefitted from ANY prior consultation of the planned job cuts. Structured consultations involving the government, labour movement and private sector had become the norm over the years, following Barbados’ creation of its laudable ‘social partners’ mechanism to ensure a stable environment, in the interest of the country’s orderly economic development. Why, therefore, did the Minister of Finance choose to ignore the necessity to at least inform the NUPW, in particular, about the coming 3,000 job public sector job cuts, having completed an economic
Nelson Mandela: Peace at Last THE Catholic Church consecrates saints with less pomp and sentimentality than was lavished on Nelson Mandela during the week-long media orgy that we have just been through. We haven’t seen such a ridiculous spectacle since...oh, since the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy three weeks ago. But at least the Kennedy orgy was over a lot faster – and nobody compared him to Gandhi or Christ. Pity the poor journalists who had to grind out endless stories about what was hardly a news event at all -- 95-year-old man dies after lengthy illness -- and inevitably ended up sounding like sycophants and fools. True, the world needed (or at least wanted) a political icon of perfect virtue, but the beatification of Nelson Mandela took much too long. The problem was that everybody in the media knew well in advance that Mandela was dying, and had time to invest millions in preparing to “cover” the event. Hotel rooms and telecom facilities were booked, crews and anchors were deployed, and the expense had to be justified by round-the-clock, wall-to-wall coverage of funeral orations, vox pop interviews, and talking heads. And, of course, all the world’s politicians showed up for the greatest photo ‘op’ of the decade, including many who had condemned Mandela as a terrorist before he pulled off a peaceful transition from apartheid to majority rule in South Africa. But now that the babble of rhetoric has died down and just before the myth takes over completely, let us talk honestly about who he was and what he accomplished. Mandela understood that South Africans needed an icon, not a mere mortal man, as the founding hero of their new democracy, but he had a strong sense of irony. It would have got plenty of exercise
as he watched the local politicos and the foreign dignitaries strew metaphorical flowers on his grave. The man whom they buried at Qunu on Sunday was arrested by the White minority regime in 1963, probably on a tip from the US Central Intelligence Agency. He was the head of the African National Congress’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), at the time, and continued to back its campaign of sabotage, bombing and attacks on military and police targets throughout his 27 years in prison. If the South African Communist Party is to be believed, he was a member of its central committee at the time of his arrest. It was a different time, when US President Ronald Reagan could declare that the apartheid regime was “essential to the Free World,” and the ANC’s main international supporters were the Soviet Union and Cuba. Mandela might have ended up as a man of violence if he had not gone to prison. Instead, in prison, he had the time to develop his ideas about reconciliation, and persuade the other ANC leaders, who were also confined to Robben Island, of their value. By the time he came out of prison in 1990, he had become the man that everybody knew they could trust -- including the Whites. During the next four years, when he and F.W. De Klerk, the last White president, negotiated the transfer of power from the White minority to the Black majority, he really was the indispensable man. His commitment to reconciliation was so visible and genuine that Whites were willing to do what had once seemed inconceivable: To hand over power before they absolutely had to. If you want to know what South Africa would have looked like if the Whites had clung to power down to the last ditch, look at Syria
management agreement, as influenced by officials of the IMF who had by then departed the country? A series of related surprises were to follow. For example, last Monday, three days after his Finance Minister’s announcement of the coming 3,000 job cuts, Prime Minister Stuart met with a delegation from the NUPW. RECALL OF 1994 CRISIS Mr Stuart had a tough message to deliver: He was not interested in talks for any “band aid” economic fix, but to get at “the root of the problem” so that in the medium to long-term, “everybody is happy...” Making “everybody happy”? He would have had for guidance what happened in 1994 to a DLP administration under then Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford, whose austerity measures were rejected by the unions. It subsequently fell to a no-confidence motion in parliament, introduced by the Barbados Labour Party’s Owen Arthur, who later became a three-term Prime Minister. Mr Stuart is now a second-term head of government. This seems reasonably long enough for the control of State power to have identified the “root” of the problems afflicting the nation rather than being trapped in 2013 into an IMF-prescribed programme with massive retrenchment in the public sector, and related negative national consequences. The planned 3,000 retrenchment of public sector workers is a most daunting challenge for the NUPW’s credibility, more so now that it has gone public with a verbal blast at ex-Prime Minister Arthur for challenging the union to take a firm stand--as it had done back in 1994-- against then Prime Minister Sandiford DLP administration’s plans for salary and/or job cuts. Although it has a mere two-seat majority in the 30-member House of Assembly, there seems no possibility of the DLP administration of Stuart suffering a similar no-confidence fate when a few parliamentarians of the then ruling party teamed up with the BLP opposition. The big question at this time of widespread uncertainties, is whether the involved unions can demonstrate a united front for negotiated alternatives to the threatened 3000 job cuts and related challenges based on the IMF-prescribed policies to stave off devaluation of the Barbados dollar? today. But it was not only Mandela who saved the country from that fate: They gave the Nobel Peace Prize to both Mandela and De Klerk, because the miracle could not have happened if De Klerk had not had the will and the skill to lead his own Afrikaner tribe out of power. Then, after the first free election in 1994, Mandela became the president, and frankly, he wasn’t very good at it. He had no executive experience, nor much aptitude for it. Thabo Mbeki did most of the hard administrative work behind the scenes during Mandela’s presidency (1994-1999), while Mandela greeted visiting celebrities, hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and solicited donations for various causes that included, unfortunately, his own extensive family. He was not personally corrupt, but he was involved in a few dubious deals, and he tolerated corruption in others. But he did his country one last big favour: He retired at the end of his first term rather than clinging to power. He was already 81 years old at that time, but lesser men (Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, for instance) have not let that stop them. And he even had a few good years left to enjoy his family before age began to drag him down. He was not a saint; he was just a man. But he was the right man at the right time. (Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist, and military historian.)
BY GWYNNE DYER
IN CONTRAST to the prevailing mood of confidence over the economic future of Trinidad and Tobago, there is spreading depression across in Barbados where thousands of public sector workers are facing retrenchment early next year as the government anxiously seeks to avoid a devaluation of the Barbados dollar. In T&T, while Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was last week playing a “Santa Claus” role with her offer of a 20 per cent reduction over two days on a range of widely-consumed basic commodities, the Guyana government of President Donald Ramotar found much comfort in another consecutive year of economic growth. The latest projection from the IMF has placed the growth at 4.8 per cent for the outgoing 2013. The Fund also pointed out that over the past decade, Guyana’s “strong macro-economic performance” has contributed to “reduction in public debt levels and sustained poverty reduction...” On the other hand, the people of Jamaica, who know much about having to cope with the consequences of prescriptions from the IMF for fiscal and economic management, can well empathise with Barbadians at this Christmas season as they prepare for coming ‘fallouts’ from thousands of public sector workers listed for retrenchment in the first quarter of 2014. Having concluded an arrangement with the IMF that included, for starters, the bitter medicine of some 3000 job cuts in the public sector, or face the threat of devaluation of the Barbados dollar, the Democratic Labour Party administration of Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has Barbadians in a mood of spreading gloom. Accustomed to the applauses from international financial institutions and credit rating agencies as having the most stable currency in this region—50 cents to the US dollar—the prospect of having to cope with a devalued dollar is viewed by Barbadians as sacrilegious talk. Yet, depending on the outcome of coming meetings with representatives of the private sector and the labour movement, and more precisely the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), we should learn after the holiday season if Prime Minister Stuart’s administration can succeed in averting the looming crisis. At the time of writing last week, the credibility of the NUPW – the largest representative of organised public sector workers -- itself seems to be at stake. Towards the weekend, it was seeking to test the mood in favour of a possible three per cent salary cut for workers, with the hope of avoiding the coming mass retrenchment. ‘Temporary’ workers