Issues Of The Heart

Hartley Henry - DLP Political Strategist

There is a potpourri of issues and ideas I would like to deal with this week. First up, the Rihanna Interview. I must admit the interviewer did a magnificent job of drawing out Rihanna on several sensitive and I would imagine painful issues, and for the most part I am convinced she spoke from the heart. However, I believe the full impact of that particular interview was lost because somehow one saw through the intent of her publicists and management team to use this “stepping out interview” as a repackaging exercise in the lead up to the release of new material. I do not think that goal was realized. That interview should have been done several weeks ago and there is nothing one has seen or heard in the interim to suggest attainment of the type of focus and maturity that is required of someone who has been given such a superb break and opportunity in life. Rihanna is going to have to do more, much more to fill and brighten the eyes of millions around the world who are already placing her in a mold most unbecoming of someone with so much potential and limitless opportunities. Age is no excuse! Rihanna needs to ‘straighten up and fly right’ if she is to achieve true greatness.

On this issue of stars and superstars, I am forced this week to give the local Digicel promoters a slap on the wrist for a newspaper advertisement, in this, the month of November and in a year when Barbados produced its first world athletics champion. Dear Digicel, I am a Usain Bolt fan. I sit on the edge of my seat whenever he steps on the track, but my instinctive reaction to your new newspaper advertisement showcasing him was “but where is Ryan Brathwaite?” I do not care that the competition has offered to sponsor him, and that he appears in some of their ads. He is 100 per cent Bajan and we are proud of him. If you are speaking about or promoting excellence in sports I would much prefer you, my preferred cellular service provider, to promote that which we have grown right here in Bim. Usain Bolt is my man on the world stage but it’s the month of November, and in 2009, especially, I want to savor the fact that this rock has produced a world champion. Don’t worry about what the competition is doing. Let us promote our own on this occasion. Showcase Sir Garfield Sobers, Ronald “Suki” King, Ryan Brathwaite and all other Barbadians who have achieved true greatness in their chosen field of endeavor.

Thirdly, I have been asked about it, but have simply smiled to myself with every installment of this “man walking out of the morgue” story. I do not wish to offer an opinion and, especially as a former student of St. George Secondary School, where to this day there is still no lunch room, I do not wish for it to appear that I have ‘a bee in my bonnet’ for any particular publication. But the old lady in Cheapside Market last Saturday morning had me in stitches several hours after she called me aside and said “But Mr. Henry they really believe that we foolish? They believe that that morgue story could shift attention from the problems in the BLP?” There were too many ears around, so I did not reply. I just smiled and thought to myself ‘Barbadians are the most politically astute and aware people in the world’.

Maurice Lee of the Minibus Association is doing his very best to promote the positive side of Public Service Vehicle operations, but I fear he is fighting a losing battle. The owners are clearly not reining in on the drivers and conductors, so I believe the Attorney General and the Ministers of Transportation and Education are going to have to do what they have to do in order to return order, decency and control to our roads. Hard ears you won’t hear, own way you must feel. There would be the occasional inconvenience to commuters, but I want to see the laws changed to enable the police to pull those vehicles off the road whenever they deliberately flout the law and wheel lock them right there for all to see. Thereafter the owners would have to go to the police station and pay a hefty fine for them to be unchained a minimum of 24 hours later.

But the issue that took the cake for me this past week, was the sorry, sad spectacle of patients discharged by doctors, hanging around in the corridors and Accident and Emergency area of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, simply because relatives have refused to return to pick them up. What manner of people are we? I had heard Minister Inniss speak to this issue a few months ago, but it did not resonate until I encountered it up, front and centre this past week. How could we be so cold and heartless? There are too many senior citizens in this country abandoned by their offspring and other relatives. I do not care what the reason is it is simply not good enough. Again, I want the relevant agencies of government to check out the names of these people and hunt their families down. Furthermore, I want the National Insurance Scheme to withhold their pension cheques, because if they are languishing in the QEH and other institutions they cannot be receiving and cashing those cheques. That pension money is enough to underwrite the cost of them being cared for in a specially created facility.

In this regard, I do not envy the work of Ministers Sinckler, Inniss and Byer-Suckoo. They have their work cut out for them and they are doing an admirable job. One does not wish to be partisan or political on this occasion, but it is instructive that such issues never occupied the attention of their predecessors and worse yet, are today still not on the agenda of those who sit across from them in Parliament. I believe more progress could be made on such matters if there was a bi-partisan approach to solving them. But, this is not economic jargon, so those on the other side would, understandably, not be interested.

Hartley Henry is a Regional Political Strategist. He can be reached at hartleyhenry@gmail.com

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