REJECT ANTI-WORKING CLASS ECONOMIC ADVICE

PRESS RELEASE
Over the past two weeks, a concerted effort has been made by a number of ‘economic gurus’ - Dr David Estwick, Mr Owen Arthur, Professor Avinash Persaud and Mr Peter Boos - to foist their opinions on a Barbadian public that they seem to believe is relatively naive and bereft of a healthy sense of its own self interest.
We in the Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP) make this observation because all of the views expressed conformed to an elitist class and ideological perspective, and yet these "gurus" seemed to expect that they would be uncritically accepted by the mass of poor and working-class Barbadians.
Dr David Estwick
Our neophyte Minister of Economic Development has proposed that the best way to tackle Barbados’ economic predicament is to impose what was initially described as a ‘national wage freeze’, and later modified to a ‘public sector wage freeze’. But how does one justify treating a maid who is barely surviving on $300.00 a week, in the same manner as a Permanent-Secretary or a top executive who is earning $90,000.00 or $200,000.00 a year respectively? Surely, any proposal for wage restraint in Barbados must be tied to an effort to restructure and ameliorate the extreme disparity between wages at the top and bottom ends of the ladder!
Furthermore, how can one talk about freezing wages without also proposing a companion price restraint policy for the big businesses of Barbados and the state enterprises that charge fees for their services? And what about wealthy corporate shareholders and professionals such as doctors, engineers, accountants and lawyers - how can one expect lower level public servants to carry the burden of restraint, but exempt wealthy professionals? Dr Estwick needs to ‘wheel and come again!’.
Mr Owen Arthur
Our former Prime Minister’s fourteen year reign was defined by his unreserved acceptance of such elitist North American and European orchestrated concepts as liberalisation, free market, free trade, neo-liberalism and globalisation. Indeed, he spent his years in office preparing Barbados to enter a so-called ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’; reducing Caribbean integration to a narrow preoccupation with concepts of free trade and free market; and embracing such ‘globalizing’ mechanisms as the ‘World Trade Orgainsation and the ‘Economic Partnership Agreement’.
Well, the global economic crisis has forcefully demonstrated the folly of these liberalisation and globalisation nostrums, and perceptive analysts have recognised that the old order is mortally wounded and that a new world system is emerging. And yet Owen Arthur is still lecturing about "Transforming The Economy in the Age of Liberalisation", and urging that Barbados’ economic policy should be based upon accommodating another round of liberalisation! It is time for Arthur to wake up and smell the coffee! His economic prescriptions are outdated and dangerous. Our future has to hinge around the development of a regional economy based on new regional industries, programmes of import substitution, and engagement with new non-traditional development partners.
Professor Avinash Persaud
After Cave Hill’s Dr Michael Howard had advised that Government should deal with the fiscal problem by reducing the number of Barbadian students at the University of the West Indies, Professor Persaud latched upon this and recommended that we should curtail funding of university education and instead focus on primary school education! What a load of backward thinking rubbish! But we are not surprised. This, after all, is the same Persaud who, in an article published in the Barbados Business Authority of 27th October 2008, approved of job cuts as a "sensible" way for local firms to deal with the international recession. Some-one should inform this self appointed "guru" that we will not permit him to lead us back onto the old plantation!
Mr Peter Boos
When the private sector guru, Peter Boos, was Chairman of our Cricket World Cup Organising Committee, he used to speak as though he was the de facto Prime Minister of Barabdos. He fed us a load of grandiose ‘hogwash’ about the supposed tremendous future benefits of the World Cup to Barbados, and encouraged us to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. Virtually none of Mr Boos’ promised benefits have materialized! However a number of his private sector peers walked away from the World Cup as millionaires, while the government and people were left holding the bag of debt. Mr Boos has never apologised to the people of Barbados - yet he has the effrontery to suggest that the main encumbrance to Barbados’ future progress is our public sector!
Conclusion
The PEP rejects the so-called ‘advice’ of all of these supposed gurus. None of them has properly analysed our predicament, and they are therefore offering fundamentally flawed recommendations. Furthermore, they are offering self-interested prescriptions that conform to their class positions or to their preconceived ideological biases.
What Barbados desperately needs is a group of people oriented professional economists who are grounded in the science of ‘physical economy’, and who understand the need of a developing country to invest in physical infrastructure and new industries, and to unleash the initiative, energy and ability of the masses of people.

DAVID A. COMISSIONG
President