Editorial changes have decreed the execution of this column, and I sincerely regret that the honour of sharing your Fridays will no longer be mine. Future "issues" already conceived will struggle for airspace and may die, while "ideas" waiting to be expressed will be stillborn, as the sword of Damocles separates the nucleus of the word from seminal contact with the written page.
And so, softly as I leave you, I propose to opine on the state of the Press and to defend the vital role of partisan columnists in the democratic process, and in securing the freedom of expression.
Every one of the freedoms we enjoy today owes its origin to a partisan, self-opiniated, hard-headed and persistent voice sometimes crying in the wilderness, but always determined never to switch sides or abandon beliefs. Sometimes the spilling of blood, or imprisonment or even the loss of life was the price paid by such a resolute diehard.
Freedom of the Press is one legacy from the lives of such men and women who, having associated together in political parties, eventually wrested power from the kings and dictators and installed the rule of law (including freedom of expression) as one of the guiding tenets of democracy. It was the last exit to freedom!
In our supreme ignorance, we describe such partisan supporters as yardfowls, spin doctors and other pejorative epithets without recognising that without them, political parties would not have existed; and that a free Press, and our freedoms and human rights, owe more to partisan agitation than to the millions spent to establish newspapers.
So that political columnists are thus cut from distinguished historical cloth. We directly support our various parties in a partisan manner well knowing that all our nation's freedoms rest on the several pillars of our multiparty democracy supported by partisans of all kinds who shout or write in the common cause of democracy. Yet we are not members of the Press.
That exalted status is correctly denied us simply because we are not umpires, but players. The journalist is the umpire, or ought to be, moderating the issues in a fair and unbiased manner, and calling it as he sees it. That is why we call the Press the fourth estate, because as part of the process of governance, it has a watchdog role over its fellow estate holders: the judiciary, the legislature and the executive.
But the local Press fails miserably! It swallows and regurgitates the news but avoids digestion and analysis like the plague. Take, for example, the current debate on the increase in diesel prices. What is the view of the Press?
Where is the analysis that allows the man and woman in the street, to judge whether there might be a viable alternative approach to managing this problem, given the social implications for our economy? The Government and the Opposition have posited divergent policies, but how can voters influence policy in their democracy if the Press does not do its duty and analyse and umpire the policy differences? Search me, I know not!
Again, shortly after the election, both front pages reported the incoming Prime Minister as declaring, in a post-Cabinet briefing, that an employee of the Urban Development Commission was dismissed effective immediately.
Almost three months later, no section of our "wet macaroni" Press has thought "to analyse" and "watchdog" the exercise of such executive "power" in the face of the Urban Development Act and the Constitution of Barbados – an Act of the Parliament of Barbados. And then we say that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Yea, right!
It ought not to be the job of columnists to save the Press from itself, nor even from the moderation of call-in programmes. At least we know where the columnists stand . . . . even as the axe falls!
*Ezra Alleyne is an attorney-at-law and former Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly.