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Volume No. 2 Issue No. 3 - Monday June 4, 2007
Rivets And Windmills: Adding Policy Focus To Political Vision So That Dominica, the Caribbean Cinderella Can Finally Get Her Invitation to the Ball
By Philbert "Atley" Aaron


They don�t care a patat. Everything for them is politics, the pursuit of votes. My Diaspora friends cannot get a hearing because of it. They try to comment on policy and people tell them to stay out of politics.

All this to say, now, I am a backslider from politics. I still want to help to take Cinderella to the ball but not as her only man. I am content to be a lowly sentry, checking out the route that Cinderella�s carriage will pass on, veyeing if there is a big stone or a pot hole in the road. Then I will yell, �Look out!�

I study. I do not act. I am a man of words, not deeds. I focus on policy, not politics. Meaning, I don�t jaloux nobody: I don�t care who take Cinderella to the big dance. Just as long as she gets there.

I am not alone. More and more Dominicans are saying just that. They want out of politics. They want what is best for Dominica. This begs the two sets of suitors for Cinderella�s love, policy people and politicians, to talk to each other because they are the two hands that clap.

Remember my political baptism? My spiritual twin, my would-be konnbos, the one who delivered the solidarity message from the north? He is a man of acttion. His name is Reginald Austrie.

Like Alleyne Carbon before him, he is a Marlowe, Joseph Conrad�s character in A Heart of Darkness, obsessed with the proverbial rivets or as we say in Dominica, �brass tacks.� Carbon and Austrie have this in common. They are the gods of little things, zagaya.

On Friday afternoon, Carbon could tell Mamo that the caterpillar was parked by the big corner at Loowoo and the road crew had stopped filling potholes at Donkey Beach. Rivets!

Small wonder that it was Austrie who replaced Carbon in the Cottage seat, right down to the Ministry he earned�Communications and Works, that portfolio of earthmovers and other such practicalities.

Small wonder that after Carbon was replaced by Austrie, Carbon was bored stiff and went back to his old daring, battling the sea. May he rest in peace.

The moral of this story is this. Politics in Dominica is a beast. It has gwif and dann: it devours its young. I mean it. Just ask Patrick John�s former associates. Policy is the safe, rational refuge for all of us who have renounced politics.

Take, for example, Carbon�s victim, Para. Para�s story is tied up with the story of Dominica. Dr. Riviere looks like a Don Quixote, that idealistic character of Miguel De Cervantes who tilted his lance at the windmills.

Para wants to be a Don Quixote but he is truly a Marlowe. Para was preaching pie-in-the sky socialism and practicing community development long before Austrie was.

But Dominica failed Para and there is a lesson in that failure. Looking back now, Para didn�t stand a chance with Cottage people. Somehow he just did not ring true.

Maybe it was that house on Harbour Lane, I don�t know. Maybe they could sense that he was a sheep in wolf�s clothing. Yes, maybe if Para had just told Bello at the Portsmouth Secondary School how to make the old fowl coop of a school better, he would have won Carbon.

After all, it is poor people children attended that school. But it was not to be. No self-respecting revolutionary could lower himself to attend to education. Just see who gets that ministry in any cabinet.

Anyway, after the elections, Riviere marched off to another windmill, this time degrees in law. Now, don�t get me wrong: leaving was justifiable. Para�s first mistake was not to mind his livelihood, that most material of materialist concerns. DLM had come to stand for Dominica Lazy Men. Alas, vole, aviole, modara, anything else Dominicans can forgive, but not feyanntiz, laziness? Awa.

We are a farming and fishing culture, used to constant sweat. People are reluctant to vote for a man who seems to work less than them. Trust me. I know. I am a man of words.

Anyway, Riviere would emerge later as a lawyer, that platform that landed DFP into power. Alas, Para is a bluesman. The boat he is trying to catch always leaves the jetty by the time he gets there. So by the time Para came back to politics, Eugenia Charles, Brian Alleyne, and Ronan David had already ruined lawyers� chances at winning elections.

The old saying, lawyer/liar, was back in full swing. By the end of Mamo�s career, she was ready to put Alleyne Carbon ahead of Brian Alleyne.

And gaining practical experience, Para lost a chance. See, the first law of politics is persistence. That is why we call seamen neg bodlamen. To make a catch, you have to sit down by the bay and skylark.

Veye labeli, we call it in Dominica, watching the tide, waiting for the right time to push your canoe into the water for political opportunity comes like a thief in the night and then it is gone. You have to be in it to win it.

Austrie the Marlowe stayed, organizing cultural events, zagaya little things, veye-ing labeli. Then, when Carbon slipped, Austrie launched his canoe, made the sign of the cross, jumped in, and away he went.

The rest, as they say, is history. And Austrie does not seem to planning to retire any time soon. Seems like he could stay in politics until the rapture. So what?

The purpose of this paper is to describe what I see in Dominica as a cowardly response to globalization. I am trying to describe the men who are vying to take Cinderella to the big dance.

I do this to explain why Cinderella still cannot leave the plantation and enter the big house. As one paper put it, the island economies are �grappling with the consequences of globalization� and �facing a serious threat from climate change,� yet they are optimistic about attaining economic development.

Espwa mal papay! Something just does not sound right about this. Now, take what I saying with a grain of salt. I am not a politician or an economist. I am just a policy analyst, a man of words.

In the 1990s, I won the national Kweyol poetry competition with a poem titled, �Donmik byen bouzwen yon ben mawaj [Dominica needs a bath].� I was referring to the kinds of baths my Ma gave us every third Friday in the month to keep the evil spirits away.

We were in secondary school and malfete could easily pass their hands on us. I was only half joking in that poem. Many Dominicans simply believe that de place cursed.

My friend Phillip Romain used to say it was when white people pushed out the Caribs that they cursed the place. Of course, I don�t believe the place kos, or that is malshanns bad luck she has.

Cinderella just wasting her youth falling in love over and over again with the same kind of wrong sagaboy. Read part three

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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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