Men with the hand grenade

IT is another month end – and as the government continues the maladministration, we were hit with the news that the Thomas-Burke-Noel triumvirate of economic no-hopers have decided to sell the people’s shares in GRENLEC to pay its recurrent public service bills.

The only silver lining in this thinking is that those shares will be sold to the National Insurance Scheme, which is technically owned by the people of Grenada.

Burke, in speaking to his favorite television channel – GIS-Lite MTV – said the talk about the sale of shares – is, well at least premature, but interestingly, not entirely out of the question.

“The government is engaged with negotiations with several companies, to talk about its shareholding in those companies, and the possible divestment of some or all of those shares,” he told MTV.

You see with Minister Burke, you have to become an expert at reading between the lines. His arguments on whatever matter are like his politics – always well said, but never straight. He can be economical with the truth (as he is with paying bills), and is an expert at dealing in “optics” –as his last two budget presentations – which have failed basic arithmetic tests – have shown.

The bottom line, is that for a second straight month, Grenadians have not been told where the cash-strapped government has borrowed money from to pay its current bills.

Minister Burke’s “none-of-you-all-business” attitude is seethed in his contemptuous posture that he is the brightest man in the room, and none of us lesser mortals would ever really understand and appreciate those nuances in financial (mis)management.

But that would have been bad enough, even if it was not a country that is going to hell-in-a-hand-basket we are talking about.

Hand it to Naz, at least he has been smart enough to only grant interviews to some of my colleagues who are either not willing enough, prepared enough nor researched enough to ask the tough questions that will force real answers.

As a nation crumbles – its economy grinding to a halt; its politics a standard joke around the Caribbean – the ruling National Democratic Congress is in “a mother of all battles” to remain relevant, let alone survive.

And so it holds its convention on the weekend – a grand celebration of the failure of leadership – the kind of which we have never seen anywhere in modern Caribbean political history.

On the eve of an election, NDC’s biggest claim to fame is that they have “defeated Peter David” – whatever that means.

Is this how success must be measured? Is that what the last four years was about?

Never mind the failure on good governance and transparency. Never mind the failure to put together a serious economic policy. Never mind policies that now have led to the resurrection of Jonah.

Eight years of co-ordinated struggle against the Keith Mitchell government, was to defeat Peter David, pauperize Grenadians, and lay the foundation for the return of the said Keith Mitchell.

Brilliant guys! I could have never engineered that plan – and I thought I was good.

That’s why we are here, at this grand round-about of nothingness, fueled by hypocrisy and ingenuity.

And so here is the NDC’s re-election platform – you are poorer and more hopeless than you were four years ago, but vote for me still, because we fought and defeated Peter David; and you should still fear Keith Mitchell.

Not even counting the inability of the captain to keep his team together – the basic test in leadership - the abysmal record of this fumbling-bumbling take-no-responsibility government, already qualifies the Thomas administration as the worst since independence.

And as Thomas celebrates on Sunday that amazing achievement of mash-up-ability, I would suggest that on his way to Seamon, he takes a detour to Carriacou, and visit the grave of Herbert Blaize.

Seek atonement for how he savaged Blaize at his memorial service for his perceived failed leadership of not being able to manage the original gang of four – of which he was the most disrespecting member.

Thomas, who always hated Blaize’s “Bind Us Together” hymn, has taken a generous page of the old Blaize failed playbook  – a leader whose uninformed rigid autocracy undermined a good thing – and paved the way for another Mitchell era.

I know the likes of my good friend Sandra Ferguson and other leaders in the NGO community, and some trade unionists too – so fear the spectre of Mitchell’s return that they can’t bring themselves to criticize this administration for “sins” that in another time they would have been marching against.

I won’t call this hypocrisy because I can testify that I was once stricken by that fear – and so let some things pass – that otherwise I should not have.

I have since been liberated from this, because fear should never be the basis of anyone’s existence.

But for bringing us to this place – with the feeling of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong – “civil society” should also now want to join me in proverbially, hanging this leadership in the public square.

And as those “leaders” ponder how to get to this place, enjoy Sunday’s final rites, complete with flag waving cheerleaders, and a fair deal of chest thumbing by the architects of this “victory.”

Glen Noel, Nazim Burke, Willie Joseph – and some other comrades of mine – remind me of the story of the man on a plane with a hand grenade, who celebrates the take-over of the flight because he now has the ability to blow it up.

And to prove that he is now in charge of the pilot, crew and passengers, he proceeded to pull the pin.

Sure he had the ability – but in pulling that pin –he crashed everything.

For Willie, who wondered if I have already put up the white flag, I declare I have duly done so on command.

I surrender all – not to the self-anointed soldier of Christ – put to the men with the hand grenade on the flight.

You run things. Pull the pin.