Barrow is bogus!

by glenntillett@yahoo.com

This week Prime Minister Dean Barrow proved for the entire world to see that he is a “self-confessed liar.”

I have written often in this space that Barrow has a penchant for speaking out of both sides of his mouth at once, and that Belize’s so-called “independent”  media never take him to task for it.

This week at the UN World Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, in direct contradiction to repeated statements over the past several years, Barrow said that Belize had been devastated to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars” by storms over the past eleven years. He even named them, beginning with Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

In so doing he exposed himself as a self-confessed liar. I am not gloating when I point this out because gloating and some such never result in anything positive. My criticism is because we have wasted far too much precious time and energy tolerating and/or enabling Barrow’s penchant for tribalism even as we face the greatest challenge ever to our existence as a nation state.

It is past time that Barrow et al admit that they too have made mistakes, and that their continued mischaracterizations, deliberate or otherwise, is aiding and abetting our inability to deal with our problems as ONE nation.

Barrow has been given a free pass on this for so long that he has become brazen about it. The unfortunate result is that he/they have believed their own propaganda for so long is that they may be beyond redemption.

I am always admiring from a technical perspective Barrow’s oratorical skills, his eloquence on occasion and his determined articulateness. In a world where these talents get short shrift I am at times even grateful that we actually have a politician who is a master at these skills.

Invariably, though, my admiration is perforce fleeting simply because of the contradictions inherent between the dread of what is being said and the pretty words, the how it is being said.

Why, I too often wonder, why can’t Barrow be inspired by his own words? Why can’t he feel and accept the fundamental truths he conveys so adroitly to others but which elementally seem to escape him? Why this cognitive dissonance?

I will continue to ask myself, perplexed that the man can say: “This is a time therefore for large hearts rather than small minds. It is a time for the commonality of compassion rather than the hubris of power,” yet continue to orchestrate tribalism at home, oblivious to the pain, the suffering, the misery he is inflicting and the danger to our nation he is engendering.

If it is true Barrow is at his best when he strides on the world stage, then it must be because he is at his worst when confronted, and I suppose confounded, by what must seem to him the mundane problems at home.

By his own admission Barrow failed to recognize the impending recession now depression. By his own admission neither Barrow nor his “experts” thought that the world financial woes would affect us, despite pronouncements from as early as last year July by leaders such as the Japanese Prime Minister who called it “A storm the likes of which the world has not seen in a hundred years.”

Barrow owes much for his very lucrative law practice to his gift of gab, and certainly owes his succeeding as a politician to the nation’s highest office to that proclivity. But the schizophrenia that is his mirrored image is that we both admire and loathe in equal parts when he opens his mouth.

It is the eternal paradox: our greatest blessing is our worse curse. Whenever Dean Barrow opens his mouth these days, we shudder at the delicious sounding words –  the sweet music grates on our nerves.

Barrow is bogus. Boy, can he talk but ultimately the man is just a gifted windbag and nothing more. Yes Barrow can capture our thoughts but he alienates our hearts.

Barrow is just bogus. In the end I figure his so-called brilliance is just so much bulls—t. He should resign.