What sweet in goat mouth...

It has been said that, “Poets sometimes say wise things which they themselves may not understand.”  Now I’m not one of those who ascribe oracular dimension to their self-styled roles as the “voice of the people,” which some of them swear is, “the voice of God” and as calypsonian Valee claimed, more plausibly, that, “the calypsonian is (more often than not) the real (informal?) opposition in the country.”  And they may have a point, given the cantankerous apology for one, that we’ve been unfortunately saddled with.

I was somewhat amused when I heard the Mighty Sparrow try to explain on the television that, in purportedly quoting Dr Williams, he had added Sparrow’s own cantankerous words to spice it up.  Sparrow must have been referring to Williams’ defiance when he “kicked Dr Pat Solomon upstairs” because, as minister of Home Affairs Solomon had injudiciously and illegally released his stepson from police custody. As the bard portrayed the arbitrary and autocratic aspect of Williams’ personality, “I’m going to bring back Solomon as minister of foreign affair and who don’t like it can get to hell out of here ... I’m no dictator, but what I say goes.. Mr Speaker Sir, when I’ve had my say .... meeting done for today “Who doh like it loss, I am the Boss”.  Having taken some liberty with Sparrow’s “words”, I still believe that I’ve got the gist. The “Caribbean Man” Black Stalin accepted Williams as the maximum leader who shared the largesse but “warned” him, “Mr Divider, this isn’t a threat this isn’t a warning this is man talking to man as long as a oil dollar making here, Black Stalin want he share.”

Dr Williams was for very long the “political darling and father figure” of the calypso community. So much so that most people don’t realise that, towards the end, a more than fair amount of scathing calypso criticism was directed at him and his political dispensation. A number of apologists have sought to explain what Dr Williams actually said or meant that led Lord Shorty (aka Ras Shorty I) to lampoon Dr Williams in his memorable “Money is no problem.”  “Babies in hospital being wrapped in brown paper/ Money is no problem/ Plenty money we paying to WASA, but all we getting is dirty water/ Doh dig nutten/ money is no problem.”  Shorty continued in that caustic vein.  I’ve a sneaking suspicion that Dr Williams, astute politician that he was, took more seriously and listened more carefully to the more insightful calypsonians than the “Holier-than-thou Wiser-than-all” arm chair politicians, “who knew book but didn’t know chapter,” and came across as impotent windbags. Which leads me to the admission that, “Ah doh know much about history, could hardly spell the word “biology,” couldn’t even recognise “a science book,” can’t remember any lessons I took. Doh know nutten ‘bout nutten at all!  But I do know that our first oil boom was not an unmixed blessing and might well have turned out to be a curse that long troubled our economy.  With an “impending boom,” you might expect that we would have taken the bitter lessons of the earlier boom’s aftermath to heart.

Dr Williams presided over the affairs of state during the first oil boom and, when the bottom fell out of the oil barrel, he left us “in a blaze of glory” and passed on “a poisoned chalice.” After Carnival, was ol’ mas’.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that the economy was in a state of shambles or, at least, near collapse. The NAR government led by ANR Robinson had little choice but to resort to “belt-tightening.” The trade unions closed ranks and demanded that the government withdraw the 1989 Budget — or else! A report quoted Hamid O’Brien, senior economist at the Ministry of Finance and the Economy as saying that in the preparation of the 1989 Budget, Government was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea or, you might say, between a rock and a hard place.  With little chance of increasing revenue from local sources to finance the budgeting gap, O’Brien then said that Government had no alternative but to reduce the level of expenditure through reduction in public service salaries. As bitter a pill as this was to swallow, the alternative was no less grim and it involved the unmentionable, if not unthinkable, of throwing a substantial number on the bread line.

Quite recently, Clive Pantin expressed the view that ANR Robinson was, in his opinion, “the best Prime Minister we ever had.  He came to cabinet meetings well prepared and he was a very fair man.” Pantin also let out that he was flabbergasted when the possibility of “sending some teachers home” was being considered as an option. I’m reminded of someone, whose credibility I value highly, telling me that before the first boom period things were so bad that government was having trouble providing even chalk (yes, chalk) for the schools. The reference was prior to the first boom. When the bust came, it was no secret that the then government was “ketchin its royal” to pay the salaries of public sector employees and being forced to sell BWIA planes to pay salaries was like selling the family jewels to pay the rent. As an aside, I might mention that I’m on record as alluding to the futility of the Bush/Gore debate as to the division of the projected huge US budget surplus. Today, it’s about reducing the burgeoning deficit. It’s not like me to rummage through the dustbin of history or indulge in the well-known, but little recognised, politically sterile game of what I perceive as “intellectual calisthenics” but the grim reality of a boom gone wrong left a trail of suffering and misery in its wake.  Financial institutions collapsed as houses of cards, millionaires became paupers overnight, many were driven to despair and lost their homes, many people’s life-savings disappeared like the morning dew, and so it seemed that what was once sweet in goat mouth turned out to be very, very sour where we dare not mention.