Or some other once in a life time experience.

Here on the island we endured eighteen years under one government. It was eighteen years of anemic growth, high crime rate, low social engineering, a sliding dollar, ballooning debt stock, high unemployment and high corruption. I remember distinctly  when they were being voted into power on the first term that would begin their eighteen year term they promised faithfully to correct all the problems that the previous administration couldn’t. They promised jobs, dollar stabilization, foreign direct investments, crime reduction, health care reform and judicial reform. Now we all knew that it wasn’t possible to achieve all that they had promised especially with regard to those that would require large capital injection but we had at least expected them to deliver on those that would require only political will. We had at least expected that they would try and reduce the level of corruption but instead we saw countless instances of government wastages. Some of the instances were so blatant you had to wonder if they thought we were blind or silly or both. We saw escalation of government officials pay, we saw tax break for wealthy connected friends we saw nepotism when it came to offering government contracts. We saw cost overruns with very little explanation given as to the reason for these overruns.

Now general election was in 2007 and saw the ushering in of the opposition government who had been so vociferous during their eighteen year stint in the political doldrums. They did so by promising a new era of change, a message which was bought wholesale by people who were sick of eighteen years of the same leadership style. This time the savvy leader of the opposition centered his prospectus on accountability. He made promises like the others, promises of infrastructural change, economic stabilization, judicial reform but he did it by giving time frames for the changes to be effected.  He promised for instance that within the first 100 days that he would make health and education free and make changes to the law so that he would see a government only spend one term  in office. Now the difference between these and promises of the past was that he placed himself solely responsible and accountable. Now this style of leadership was novel to the island because in the past no one was ever held responsible for unfulfilled promises least of all a prime minister who for all they knew were untouchable. Consequently many people bought into the idea like it was the gospel.

Now  its two years into this so called “novel form of leadership “ and health and education is free as he promised. However the health system is barely coping with influx of people who are taking advantage of the free system and consequently there are long delays in treating people. The reason for this is that the health care system is not being sufficiently financed by the government and the fees that used to once be used to supplement  the meager allocation is now being taken away and now even basic supplies like syringes are medicines are not available. Similarly the abolition of fees is affecting the ability of schools to deliver quality education and the schools now have to find away to get money by use of  miscellaneous fees. The bill to limit the term of the government to only one term is yet to be instituted. The economy is slipped into almost the doldrums and now we have to be going back to IMF to borrow money to sustain our daily expenses and job cuts are looming. Corruption is so prevalent that we now have a new central bank governor getting the same pay and fringe benefits that the previous one was sacked for getting, in fact he has more benefits. ..so corruption basically has a new face. People are being sacked left right and center, once and entire board was sacked and new people found to replace them and very little explanation given. He recently told us we can expect a new wave of taxes and this is the leadership style he has adopted, he makes decisions and basically passes them down to us..

I don’t know if politics is just the ultimate corrupting influence but it seems to me that  irrespective of their honest intentions, these somehow gets discarded when they enter into parliament.

If you can prove me wrong I welcome your comment.

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