The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

To some Bahamians, the world came to an end this week because Perry Christie postponed Carnival.

If only we had more pressing issues in this country to get exercised about. Like maybe if we had an election coming, or about our crumbling economy, or crime, or the parlous state of our education system.

These issues will have to wait because we must first wine and dance and shake-up we self. Wining and gorging won’t solve anything but at least we will get a nice buzz while doing it.

Carnivalistas need to chill. So, the third annual running of Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival got pushed back a few days? Big deal. The vendors who will be out of pocket, the few tourists who would have to tussle with airlines and hotels about changed travel dates, and with employers about changed vacation schedules have a legitimate complaint.

For the rest of the festival-goers, if Monday falls on a Friday they ain’t care. They just want to party.

The mother of Caribbean carnivals, the pre-Lent bash held in Trinidad & Tobago, has been postponed a few times since 1845 when it first started. As recently as 2015 there was advice given to the government there to postpone carnival as a precaution over the Ebola fears. It went ahead anyhow.

In 1972 carnival was postponed from February to May because of a fear over polio. How did the Trinis react? In song, of course. Their jokey lyrics about the postponement, were made ever more hilarious by the fact that the heavy rains of May washed away the festival that year.

It was not the end of the road back then. Carnival roared back. It has come close to postponement before, but mostly because of funding issues. Funding issues have led to postponement of carnival in other jurisdictions such as Jamaica.

But money won’t stop we carnival. Christie will scrape every last penny from the VAT cookie jar to make sure the carnival committee has money to waste.

I submit that in our faux outrage over the postponement of carnival we missed the larger point about the failure of leadership and about poor political judgment. Christie failed miserably on both. He postponed carnival in a wishy-washy attempt to try and get us to de-link frolicking in the street from the solemn duty of voting.

He weaseled out of taking responsibility for his postponement decision by saying that it was the carnival organizers who had recommended it. Then Christie somehow woke up the hibernating Minister of Tourism, Obie Wilchombe and said “my brother this on you”.

Wilchombe quickly passed that poisoned chalice to the functionaries in his ministry and promptly went back to his dreams about lottery tickets and gaming.

Christie’s judgment was called into question again because once again he rolled the dice on an important social issue and he came up 7-out (i.e. he luck bad). If given a chance Christie will continue to play craps with the economy and with the society for another five years.

And to underscore that he is a flawed leader who craves approval but caves at the slightest blowback, Christie reversed himself 48 hours later and said that the on-again-off-again carnival on May 4-6 was now on-again.

Weak and indecisive leadership will not get the ship of state off the rocks and back on course. These times demand a leader who will stand up for what he believes and will defend it provided it was a wise and prudent decision in the first place.

Those visitors who rushed to pay the $250 airline change fee when Christie first made the postponement and now have to pay another $250 to change back, can vouch for the fact that indecisiveness can be costly. Now think about our $6 billion national debt and how weak leadership will cause us to have to pay more in interest to service that mortgage.

For the rest of us who know Perry Christie, his flip-flopping was just business as usual. However, running a country isn’t like an illicit game of throwing bones in an alley. But you probably stand better odds of winning a dice game than you would waiting for Christie to show some true grit.

Maybe carnival headliner Trinidadian Machel Montano can give Christie a few tips on how to lead “Like a Boss”.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

April 8, 2017.