SAVE OUR YOUTH FROM HYPOCRISY IN HIGH PLACES!

Two years ago, then Opposition Leader, David Thompson, along with then Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, and their two political parties, inundated Barbados with a flood of Jamaican dance hall and dub artistes! They did so in a calculated effort to pander to and to win the votes of our Barbadian young people in the 2008 General Elections.
Rather than seeking to encourage our youth to engage in serious thinking and discussion about the critical issues facing our nation during the General Election campaign, Messers Thompson and Arthur, and their two political parties, sought to distract and entertain our young people with imported dub singers from Jamaica! Indeed, in the days leading up to the January 2008 poll all we could hear about were DLP and BLP music based rallies for the young people of Barbados.
Just imagine, during the last General Elections, these two leaders and their two political parties, claimed that that they could not find the time or resources to arrange even one televised political debate, yet they had no difficulty finding time or resources to import numerous Jamaican and Trinidadian entertainers into Barbados for the titillation of our youth!
Now, two years later, Mr Thompson and other members of the political class are self-righteously getting up on their moralistic soap boxes and denouncing our youth for having made questionable Jamaican entertainers into their role models.
And in an exhibition of high class comedy these shallow national leaders permitted Mavado and Vybz Kartel to come to Barbados and performed during the period of time that these two artistes were involved in a violent feud and were releasing offensive, violence filled songs, but have chosen to ban them now that they have ended the feud and have allegedly committed themselves to promoting positive and peaceful messages!
How therefore can one quarrel with our young people when they contemptuously dismiss the adult leaders of our society as a bunch of hypocrites?
The Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP) is sick and tired of all of this exaggerated and constant denunciation of the young people of Barbados! If you listen to the mainstream political, religious and social leaders of Barbados, one would think that the young people of Barbados are the most degraded and delinquent creatures on the face of the earth, and the most inferior generation of Barbadians!
Yet, there is so such evidence around us of positive, disciplined, talented and well behaved young Barbadians. Indeed, this generation of young Barbadians is achieving at the international level in phenomenal ways that previous generations could not even dream about! In a world that is infinitely more complicated and stress filled than the world of the 1950's and 60's, we witness numerous Barbadian teenagers and young adults routinely managing daily schedules made up of a multiplicity of activities and developing into well rounded, multi-skilled citizens.
Of course there are also many young people who have fallen short of the mark, but let us be balanced in our criticism, and acknowledge that the good among our youth significantly outweighs the bad.
Let us also recognise that the world is in an era in which degraded forms of culture are being foisted on societies all over the world. And in the face of this enormous challenge, our Barbadian young people have done and continue to do remarkably well.
And let us also not fail to recognise the many ways in which the adult society has failed and continues to fail out youth. For example, Barbadian politicians who buy votes in elections and who set out to systematically reduce our young people to insensible, materialistic beings who only respond to the bribery of money and entertainment!
So too the case with Barbadian pastors and priests who dilute the spirituality of the nation with their morally bankrupt, money based "Prosperity Gospel", or with their sterile, establishment oriented Christianity. And businessmen and women who view our youth as merely a captive commercial market to be exploited and plundered, and act in accordance with that vulgar conception.
Please let us stop the hypocrisy and this exaggerated denunciation of our youth.