What grade does the BLP deserve after their first year in Government?  Let us compare their achievements with those of the last DLP administration.

The BLP administration continued the DLP’s poor practises of: giving corrupting no-bid contracts, increasing taxes, laying off public workers, making commuters wait hours for public transportation, and rejecting the international management standard that could have significantly improved the general poor management of public services.

The BLP has also continued the DLP practise of only listening to the economic advice of their most partisan supporters.  The BLP has addressed the sewerage problem which the DLP seemed incapable of doing; but they also defaulted on paying our foreign debt, something that the DLP, and no previous BLP administration, has ever done.

The DLP deservedly attracted the bad press, criticism, and public marches for their gross mismanagement of the economy and public services.  The BLP administration has not provided better management.  But their effective public relations exercises make it seem that they have.

The decision to default on our foreign debt is something that would have attracted near-riots if done by the last DLP administration.  Instead, such a failure has been met with understanding or applause.  Shockingly, rather than try to be discreet about this unprecedented failure, we are wiping our foreign creditors’ faces in it, as we boast about the amount of foreign reserves we have – by not paying them.

For the management of their business, the BLP administration deserves an A.  For their management of our business, they deserve, at best, the same grade that we would give the DLP for their gross mismanagement.

Grenville Phillips II is a Chartered Structural Engineer and President of Solutions Barbados.  He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com