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Volume No. 2 Issue No. 4 - Monday June 18, 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 V
By Philbert "Atley" Aaron


To get Dominicans� votes, you have to do retail politics. You have to make it personal. You have to watch them in their koko zye. You have to come into their yard even if they will place a chamber pot in a strategic location to deter you.

You have to be a Marlowe, know where every vote is, who left for Guadeloupe, who is in the US, who needs a support letter to present to the US embassy in Barbados, whose son just got beat down by Police.

You cannot buy a little family car anymore. You need an SUV or a pick-up truck because if God forbid somebody flags you down on your way to Roseau and you do not stop, alas Papa Bondye, is trouble. You enngwa. You pwejije.

The Dominican electorate does not believe in policy. Everything is personal. And that trickles up to the ministers and to the Prime Minister. Probably half of Rosie�s trips overseas were to go and beg for money to retire this candidate�s debt, to buy this candidate a car, to upgrade this one�s shop.

In short, politics calls for a Don Quixote while governance and policy call for a Marlowe. It would be good to think of politicians as Don Quixotes and the Civil Servants as Marlowes.

One goes for windmills, the other homes in rivets. Each has to know his limit. The technocrat, policy planner, or Civil Servant is not in power; nobody voted for them. They do not answer to the electorate.

They are not politically accountable. My friends in the Diaspora, with their prestigious degrees, have a hard time getting that point. Dominicans are fed up with the Diaspora pontificating on everything when they are not accountable to Dominicans.

Like Mike Douglas told Father Chauvet who was hiding in his soutane and behind the pulpit and lobbing grenades after Labor and Alliance on behalf of Freedom Party, �Come to the market square, let me cut your backside.�

If Diaspora wants to run things in Dominica, they (we?) should leave those cushy jobs overseas, plant a microphone in Lagon, and tell people to vote for them.

The politician, however, is not necessarily a policy planner. That you won a few thousand votes does not make you some policy expert. Popular votes will not place a degree at the top of your resume. Let us not go back to the Patrick John days when politicians used to decide down to the precise location of bridges and roads.

Policy is not the route to power in Dominica and that may be fine. Para learned that in 1980 and sometimes forgets it today. Michael Astaphan has not learned that yet. Give Para and Michael credit, though.

They are educating the masses, preparing the day when a philosopher can become king. But for now, politics is the route to power. They will talk policy till their tongues come out long so but if they cannot make Cinderella�s heart beat till she swoons, not for nothing they getting into power.

In other words, politics is not a rational enterprise. It is the pursuit of entrepreneurs, men like Carbon and women like Mamo who do not take no for an answer. They take risks.

They have the boos-o-lavi attitude. They take no prisoners. They exploit opportunity. And if opportunity is too slow to come, they force it to come like Freedom Party did to Patrick John, trouble him, trouble him, until he got so vexed, he being a Colonel, opened fire in their backsides. Then, overboard Ma Jojo, he was out.

They are salespeople, saying whatever they have to do to succeed. Specifically, in politically underdeveloped countries like Dominica, the likely successful politician is a charismat.

Policy, by contrast, is a rational enterprise. It is a planning activity. It is the pursuit of listeners, followers not leaders, men and women who get the message. The central problem of development for us is how to put a little Marlowe or rivets in their Don Quixote or windmills.

Where I Getting What I saying?
I have already said it. Who vexed, burst. Dominica�s political culture, like others in the Third World favors the rise of Don Quixotes or charismats, neg sann cho.

Dominica has had her fair share of them: Patrick John, Eugenia Charles, Rosie Douglas, Roosevelt Skerritt, and Earle Williams. Our Marlowes are few and far between.

They are, I contend, Edison James, Para Riviere, and potentially Michael Astaphan. Yes, Para wishes himself a Don Quixote but deep within, he is a professor. Let us therefore put this thesis to the test in the case of Dominica�s foreign relations.

Case Study 1: International Relations Don Quixotes can be heroic or tragic. It all depends on the task at hand, national liberation or social and economic development. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela delivered the republic safely from its Apartheid past and wisely exited stage left.

It will take another leadership orientation to bring the millions of long-repressed black South Africans out of poverty. Water, electricity, work, require detailed planning and efficient execution.

Time for rivets. Time for Marlowes. Mandela�s wisest move was to leave his Cinderella at the doorstep to the ball. Let another man have the hassles of fussing over her dress, her drink, her dance steps. Mandela the big picture man took her to the doorstep and went about his business. Moses did that too.

In Dominica, the quixotic Patrick John pushed Dominica into political independence and just as quickly unleashed an international relations disaster on the island. Enough said about that.

The Marlowe, Para Riviere was involved in one of the most critical failures of political planning in failing to ally with the equally quixotic Rosie and Mike Douglas in a pre-election arrangement in 1980 in spite of Cuban efforts to bring them together at least for the sake of the Grenada Revolution. Enough about that, too.

The quixotic Eugenia Charles� international relations were a spectacular failure if only because of the expectations Charles had provoked. Oh the steel ships waiting to dock under Freedom rule! Oh, how the private sector would invest! Enough about that, too.

Just play back Spider�s Hypocrites!
When Freedom sweep the polls
All kind of boom-boom roll�

Let them roll toujou. Getting into power is just the beginning. They did think that development was a political campaign? Fifteen years later, they discovered. It took Spider a few months to see that.

But to my surprise
Nothing materialize

So, like hell Spider criticized.

Charles served three five-year terms, each on a smaller majority. Even as her local political fortunes waned, Charles grew larger than life, larger than Dominica, apparently a player in global politics.

What player that? Espwa mal papay! Delusions of grandeur. Charles� high point in international politics would be her famous eclipsing of President Ronald Reagan in the wake of the invasion of Grenada.

After that address, she had to wait for day to break to catch a plane back to Dominica. So those who have intimate knowledge of goings-on behind the scenes during those heady days of international fame suggest that Charles was surprised by the attention she received during that brief period of rapidly unfolding events on the world stage.



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

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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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