LIGHTNING DOES NOT usually strike the same target in the same way twice, but this fact is proving little comfort for a group of aspiring individuals.
Cou Cou was told that some of them old enough to remember are saying that the goings-on in Barbados of late have an eerie similarity to events that took place 26 years ago. So apprehensive are they that one of their researchers has penned a piece explaining why 1991 matters.
In the note read to Cou Cou, it was noted that back in 1991 a precise-speaking, bespectacled man of a determined team was seeking to win a great prize. So he hatched a strategy of winning it by not disclosing the full facts, and painted all those who sought to enlighten the public of the truth as liars.
The one entity that could unravel his story was a supposedly independent body. However, that body never disclosed the full facts until after the bespectacled man had won the coveted prize. So though his opponents were proven right, they still ended up losers.
Though the release of the information late was always said to be coincidental, it did not go unnoticed that the head of the entity had been appointed by the bespectacled man.
The relevance of that situation and what’s going on today is that the big impasse in Barbados is between the present leader of the same supposedly independent body and key members of the same determined team, led this time by a different precise-speaking, bespectacled man.
It seems the determined team no longer has any use for the entity’s leader and is trying to offload him.
Once that is done, the team will install someone who will do their bidding without question.
The fear comes from the fact that the man who saw the success of that 1991 strategy up close is at the centre of this present impasse. His presence, it would appear, is giving some of his opponents a sinking feeling about the entire matter.
Sweet-talker back in the fold
POLITICIANS MUST BE wired differently from other human beings, given their uncanny ability to swing the negatives against them into positives.
Maybe that’s the power of their persuasive tongues or their instinctive ability to be able to adapt in any given situation to survive.
Whatever it is, it sure is working for a losing candidate in the 2013 general election.
This candidate lost by a whisker, but then reportedly incensed many of his support staff by not paying them in a timely fashion. Then they said the man, who was always in their face like a bouncing basketball for months, seemed to have disappeared.
The workers were so upset that they reportedly sent a message to their triumphant party leader not to send the individual back to the constituency. At the time they noted that given this man’s stated principles, he should not have disappeared like that. And they pointed out that the person he took over from always came through with payments, though he was not as well off.
But as a man from that camp once said, “Time longer than twine”, and with time, people’s minds change. The same thing seems to have happened with this man and his followers turned detractors.
Cou Cou was told that he has managed to get the same people who were once so frustrated with him to be eating out of his hand.
So now, a constituency the opposition would have been looking at to increase their majority may turn out to be a harder fight given the persuasive power of this man’s tongue.
