In 1963, Michael Anthony wrote “The Games Were Coming.”  He set the stage carefully in the lead up to the games and when all the conditions were right:

“When the crowds packed both the main and the uncovered stands …, when the club-house and the grounds were bright with the colours of the flags -  

when the peal of trumpets sounded, and the pigeons were released, and when the Leader of the Band marched smartly from the pathway, causing the great roar from the crowd.”  Anthony said that:

 “- the time of the Southern Games had come.”

They called out an icon to lend them legitimacy as they made the case to the people for a vote of no confidence in the government.

The nonagenarian, Eileene Lucia Parsons, a former At Large Representative and a former Deputy Premier (title change in 2007 constitution) gracefully anchored and united the group around their common cause to fall the government of Premier, the Hon. Dr Natalio Wheatley.

It could have been a show, possibly a circus, but the grace, poise, respectability and eloquence of Mrs Parsons rescued the moment.

The radio appeal and call-in programme allowed His Majesty’s loyal Opposition to engage the people in the dialogue ahead of the formalities in the People’s House expected to be on Friday.

It probably only surprised the Opposition that it did not happen.  Democracy is being challenged.

Some call the vote treasonous.  It is not.  They forgot that the VIP government brought 3 votes of no confidence against the NDP government (2 by Fahie and 1 by Fraser.)

And they want to forget that the sitting Premier brought a motion of no confidence against the former Premier.

Even if the case meets with success which is highly unlikely, the Opposition has a problem.  It is made up of 3 distinct splinters, each with its own head and at least 2 with a conundrum about power.

There is repressed pain from cooked up schemes and dialogues in the dark; From betrayals, back stabbings, clandestine campaigns to discredit;

Absconding with agreed spoils in hand, caprice that has changed expectations, arranged voyages to create distance and, of course, those who simply believe that their time has come.

“Everybody wants to rule the world.”  Five Premiers are in-waiting on the Opposition.  Cohesion, for them, is possibly just a word in the lexicon.  There is no evidence that it applies.  But there is ample evidence that ‘politics makes strange bedfellows.’ (Oxford dictionary of phrase and fable)

The variegated splinters arrived at that state over power struggles.  There was no ‘Errol Barrow’ in either Party as existed in Barbados with the courage to determine the road ahead; ‘The Road Less Travelled.’

When he was leaving the scene, Barrow said; “‘Sandy’ (Lloyd Erskine Sandiford) and then any card can play.”  It avoided fights and splinters within the Party.

The hunger and thirst for power amongst BVI politicians is probably nothing different than plays out in some of the most powerful parliaments of the world.

In the space of a five-year term, the UK had three Prime Ministers.  Imagine the throat cutting, the betrayals, the treachery.

The US is a different kettle of fish.  They are literally making the case for the political philosophy adopted by Russia, China and other curtained countries.  Democracy appears to be on its deathbed.

They are also elevating and venerating lies.  And those lies are hurting and endangering the lives of real people, citizens in some cases, legal residents, in others.  

The problem in all of this is that the people are incidental to the political process.  They are convenient pawns on the chessboard.

But politicians appear ignorant of what Tim Alberta points out in “The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory.”

“On this earth, all glory is fleeting.” 

It is hard to tell on the global stage who is in it for the people.  It is much more difficult in small island developing states like the BVI.

It would, according to Bertrand Lettsome, be ‘a red-letter day’ in the BVI, when the personal ambition of the leaders takes second tier to the interest of the people.

If only the people mattered, someone would have a plan.  Instead of the Opposition calling on the deaf ears of the front benches to present a nonexistent plan, they could, in their ‘Shadow Cabinet’ lay out their own.

They could show some cohesion and put country above self.  They can subscribe to Kipling’s (The Law of the Jungle):

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

But ours are not elected views so we cannot claim wisdom.  They are only the views we share,

On Fridays.

Happy Friday!