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Volume No. 2 Issue No. 5 - Monday July 02, 2007
Rivets And Windmills: Adding Policy Focus To Political Vision So That Dominica, the Caribbean Cinderella Can Finally Get Her Invitation to the Ball - Part VI
By Philbert "Atley" Aaron PhD


Okay, we crooked Grenada. That was a bitter pill enough. Nothing that some serious money couldn�t make bearable.

However, the economic windfall that Dominicans expected from Charles� role in the Grenada affair did not materialize.

IMF, otherwise known to stand for International Monetary Fund came to mean �It�s Mary�s Fault.� Dominica�s national debt would balloon.

Except for a few large projects at the end of her leadership, Charles� own constituency, Roseau Central would appear to have benefited little from Charles� national and international prominence.

Charles� DFP would tumble from power in her absence and is presently in its last death throes. The sense was that Dominica was the Judas that got much less than his thirty pieces of silver.

Today, Eugenia is a bigger disappointment than John. You know why? Because for once we did really believe this person could take us to the grand ball. Espwa mal papay! After Mamo, Cinderella is a fanm tome, a woman with a spoilt identity, a jilted lover in it just for the fun, just for the good time.

Edison James, a Marlowe otherwise bumbled through international relations. 1995 saw the rise of the most spectacular political phenomenon in electoral politics in the Caribbean when a newly formed political party, the United Workers� Party (UWP) came to power under the leadership of Prime Minister Edison James.

UWP�s victory was credited to the personality of its leader, Edison James. James was the antithesis of Charles. Whereas Charles was a Don Quixote of a barrister who had entered political life in defense of the civil rights of Dominicans in the face of an increasingly autocratic DLP, James was a Marlowe.

In fact, James had almost no political experience at all, never having been elected even Parent Teacher Association president. James seemed to have heeded the advice to study hard and stay out of politics.

In fact, that was James� most important asset, he was not a traditional politician, not a charismat, a big talker.

James� background is in the management sciences. Until then, James occupied Dominica�s most critical position, chairman of the island�s banana exporting agency, the island�s largest export by far.

Relieved from his management position by Charles, James came to power after a political crusade that promised Dominicans that they would �Fear No More� the wrath of Eugenia Charles and go from �Crisis To Recovery� with UWP.

�Crisis� referred to the challenges facing the banana industry that were associated with increasingly unfavorable trade relations with a unifying European Union.

In short order, however, James, too, would fall out of political favor in large part because not even Mr. Banana could save the banana industry any longer.

Ironically, James� government, like Charles� before his, would also be tarnished by association with dubious economic schemes with unsavory local and foreign actors who were redolent of Dominica�s first Prime Minister, Patrick Roland John�s misadventures with apartheid South Africa and the Ku Klux Klan.

But politics can corrupt lesser men. Power changed James. Deep in his heart, his model for a leader was still that of a charismat, Eugenia Charles, Patrick John.

He forgot his inner Marlowe and fell in love with Don Quixote. He lost his identity in power, becoming a true politician, not a manager.

How else can you explain why he did not fire those toxic colleagues of his? The manager of DBMC would have fired Timothy long time ago. Now, Cinderella was starting to sink lower and lower.

The men she had rejected in her youth were starting to look like prize catches to her. Despair does that. Pride, like they say, goes before a fall.

In her indecision and on the rebound from James, Rosie, a Quixote par excellence, got Cinderella and was soon paralyzed by fear. By the year 2000, the formerly anti-communist, anti-Castro Dominica of Eugenia Charles and the pragmatic Dominica of Edison James had a crisis of confidence and of identity.

Former Black Power radical, a former friend to Panama�s Manuel Noriega and Libya�s Muammur Quaddaffi, Roosevelt Douglas came to power.

Dominica was once again ready to play Cold War politics, that game of grand symbolic gestures in world forums in favor or against East or West as a strategy for receiving economic assistance.

Except that the world was no longer bipolar. There was one super power. And economics was the only game in town.

Douglas� tenure was marked by personal disappointment. Confidants have suggested that in his final days in office as the documents requiring his signature piled up on the Prime Minister�s desk, Prime Minister Douglas recoiled from the pile, promising that he would sign the first one that might have some material impact on the life of Dominicans.

Douglas needed an Yvor Nassief. Tony and Yvor were right to send the red t-shirts and to stay away. The Douglas clan, as large a local clan as you can get in Dominica could not even rally behind their last great hope except for a few speeches about Ma Pampo and globalization.

Douglas would soon die in office a tragic figure. Death actually saved Rosie, the only man to have really dedicated his life to Cinderella, from deeper despair. Rosie seemed at the time to be the last of our Don Quixotes. Seemed. Espwa mal papay!

Read Earlier Sections
Rivets and Windmills - Part One
Rivets and Windmills - Part Two
Rivets and Windmills - Part Three
Rivets and Windmills - Part Four
Rivets and Windmills - Part Five

Comments about this article? Email:
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thedominican.net
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Volume No. 2 Issue No. 2
Morne Diablotins
Help save SMA
Morne Plat Pays
John in hall of fame
The tale of SMA



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