NOT?TOO?LONG?AGO, we got to know much about the softer side of Prime Minister Freundel Stuart. Of his humble beginnings, his dedicated father, his influential and virtuous mother, his diligence in school study, his passion to be a lawyer for the defence.
We even learned that he makes some of the most profound decisions while he is doing his laundry by hand.
The interview he gave our SUNDAY?SUN writer Gercine Carter was insightful and deliciously interesting. Far from our thoughts was that he might be the one to introduce late Prime Minister David Thompson to a rum shop. That was until we learned who the private man really was.
And we thank Mr Stuart for the frank interview.
What we need to do now, though, is to get to know better Freundel Stuart, the Prime Minister. Somewhere along the line there seems to be a disconnect.
We are not sure where the Prime Minister is headed or what he hopes for, given that for him “one step is enough”. Grant you, this was his reply to whether Mara Thompson would sit in his Cabinet, but the “one-step” has been Mr Stuart’s only move.
Is it too much for the Prime Minister to talk to us on Judge Marston Gibson, while letting us know if he is as optimistic about the economy as the Central Bank of Barbados Governor Dr DeLisle Worrell?
We have seen his fire on the political platform in the St John by-election as we have noticed his calm; we have come to know his measured tongue. But is he just content to be public orator number one?
What of his ministerial responsibilities? Is he happy to continue carrying along the diminished workload or thereabouts of his ill predecessor David Thompson? Will there be any Cabinet reshuffling of his?
What will step two be; and step three? Is it too much to expect some administrative action from Mr Stuart?
Could we look forward soon to quarterly Press conferences on the business of the state? What about post-Cabinet announcements of important decisions? What should we indeed expect of Freundel Stuart, Prime Minister?
One sure thing is a few more steps at a time, and a quickening of them too.
The “thunderous rebuff” to which the Prime Minister alluded, on the whopping defeat of the BLP candidate Hudson Griffith in St John last week, is known to be no respecter of persons or sides – a companion to inaction and letdown.
