COMMENTARY: Another month of May

I had hoped that today May 29th the 34th anniversary of the events of May 29th 1979 I would have been able to place a book titled May 29th on the shelves but unfortunately a delay in its printing and my refusal to accept hastily put together work just to make the date has put a temporary brakes on that.

I do regret the delay however c’est la vie.  It is coming around the bend soon.  Yet this month of May has been overwhelmed with tons of other topics for discussion if only there was space for it.  It has been a month of sad funerals, a famous fast track and oddly secret wedding of our Prime Minister, the month when the eagle called Sico has landed, gays demanding rights, an obviously tainted new magistrate arrives, money laundering and a blacklisting by France.

Oh what a May it has been for Waitikubuli. The amazing thing is that those who rose against Patrick John in May 34 years ago for much less are now tacitly in support of all that is going on today because they are drinking from the holy grail power cup.  It means that May 29th 1979 was not about any righteous ideal of saving the nation but simply about power and the people were made to shout “amen” to that. Just look around you now and taste the proof of the pudding.  The famous 17th century playwright John Webster wrote,  “Whether you fall by ambition, blood or lust, like diamonds we are cut (exposed) by our own dust”

The question to be asked is whether we can survive all these scandals and still be left standing? Yes we can but we need leadership urgently.  We were observers and participants in the dream of the late Edward Leblanc to have the class structure broken so that the children of the poor would be able to stand as equals in our society and that someone like Skerrit from humble beginnings could stand as our Prime Minister.  As a teenager I screamed loudly at Leblanc’s platform meetings.  He showed us that nobody can ride your back if it is not bent and to cringe before no one but God.  Much of what is enjoyed today and taken for granted by the youth came about because of the dream of Edward Oliver Leblanc and the then members of the Labour Party since he could not do it alone.

There were other committed men and women who walked in the mud and mire striving to take us to the dry land.  Christopher Loblack was one such, who while he lived devoted his time to shaping the future for low-paid workers. The Dominica Trade Union became so huge that from it sprung Patrick John’s WAWU and Anthony Joseph’s DAWU.
They served as bridges between the old and the new social order and it is proper that the UWP named one of the two bridges across the drying Roseau River after Loblack.  I suggest that the other be named after Leblanc and the name of the primary road to the bridge changed to “Liberty Street.”  In any case we have too many “George Streets in Roseau.”

One thing seems to be universal to all great people is that they do not dream for show, but pursue the ideals of their vision to death if necessary. They do not all successfully accumulate but they all accumulate success, for their main goal is service to others.

The late PM Roosie Douglas never was heard to say the words, yet after his death his party followers assured us that they were following his vision for developing Dominica.  That revelation was not defined and we ended up with near bankruptcy and chaos.  It is said that nothing is sadder than the death of an illusion.

Now we have a new generation of leaders and we all ask what is the vision of our present PM Roosie Skerrit?  His supporters see hope but Oliver Wendell Holmes warns “Beware how you take hope from any human being.”  He places himself in the vanguard of our development, as he must but I have spoken to some skeptics who have commented that this is only politics and politics is about power not development and talk of a vision is only for the political campaign until the next speech in another political campaign.

Yet if Mr. Skerrit is to succeed he must follow the path of the other great leaders and dreamers mentioned here, which is to rise above differences, be they social or political and first unite the people.  That should be his first and main vision.  This unity can only come about if he is seen to place the right talent in the important positions and open his doors to all with ideas regardless of party affiliations.  He must not get carried away with his 18-3 win of the last elections and overlook the fact that in our first-past-the-post system, the small differences in most constituencies can easily be changed with strategic campaigning by a committed and determined opposition party. So it is important to his success that we must be made to feel that we should join hands on this our piece of Earth; the battle is elsewhere.

Political cronyism can be an obstacle to dreams.  Cronies must just not be invited to his wedding but should just not be invited.  I ask of him as has been asked before in other places, that if in one hand you hold a dream and in the other you hold an obstacle to that dream, which will you focus on?  The preferred answer can make a Prime Minister cry out either “Thank God,” or “Oh God,” at the next elections.  Every month of May many seem to be making the same plea to God, “Please save our nation from more scandals, corruption and chicanery in government,” then turn away.  Will we be saying it again when another month of May comes visiting?  It is up to us.