Are We in a ‘Cold War’ or are we living in a Comedy Country?

When I try to follow the conversations going on in this country, whether on radio, social media, or listening to reports on happenings in this country I keep wondering whether we are in a ‘Cold War’ or our country has become a big Comedy Show.

Yes, we who are said to have had an Education Revolution. Honestly, I never understood what we meant by ‘Education Revolution’. I have gone through all levels of the education system. I have studied revolutions, including the Industrial Revolution but have difficulty understanding what this new one means. What we need in this country are sane conversations. Instead, we have what I am describing as a’ Cold War’. A word or a sentence or a saying comes from on top and the recipients of the ‘education revolution’ take it/them up and repeat with pride.

I am intrigued with the labelling of people as being lazy. I am using this one because I heard it said that I had been called lazy. I never paid attention to it because I did not know the circumstances or the context in which this was said. But that label is so common today. It is a word that applied particularly to the immediate post-emancipation period when the planters and colonial officials regarded the newly emancipated as lazy because many did not readily continue to work on the estates. The ‘reasoning’ was that they could get food easily from the provision grounds and unoccupied lands elsewhere and because their wants from life were not of any major significance there was no incentive to work.

Our colonial masters justified their continuing control over us by saying that we were too lazy to develop the colonies; the colonies that by their calculations and reasoning belonged to them. As I write I have found a piece from I WITNESS NEWS of September 5, 2025. It is an opinion piece and the caption is “Laziness, eh?” The writer ends with the following, “Until Vincentians stop settling for sweet talk and start demanding substance, we’ll keep breathing recycled air in a country that desperately needs fresh wind.” This might perhaps have come from a graduate of the Education Revolution, or better said, a participant in that glorious revolution! Eh!

On September 10 the Agency for Public Information ran a really comic piece. In a story on the new port it stated, “All part of transitioning SVG into a first world nation, building a modern port is part of this overall vision….”
These days we don’t hear much about developed and developing nations and first world, so I tried to find a definition to show how ridiculous we have become: “A first-world country is a wealthy country that has an industrialized economy, a democratic government, a strong infrastructure, and adheres to the rule of law….”

Some common characteristics of first world countries are listed- High income, Diversified economies, Service dominated economies, Technologically advanced with strong infrastructure and High Human Development Index scores. I really do not intend to continue with this because even terms like “first world” are antiquated. But imagine we who are at the bottom of the Eastern Caribbean/Caricom level talking of transitioning into first world status!

The comedy part I must continue.

I have lost track, but it appears to me that over the last six months to a year we have been hearing of a multiplicity of projects to come on stream. Let me clarify this for with elections months, in fact, weeks ahead we are continuing to hear this talk and to see efforts being made to do things that should have been but had not been done for more than five years. Some of these, interestingly enough are infrastructure projects. To build our modern port and referral hospital we have had to import skilled workers. One must assume for the over 100 projects it appears to me we will have to import a huge number of skilled workers. Here is where this so-called education revolution has failed. We should have had an understanding of what our plans were and awarded scholarships to help to fill those gaps. Is it that those plans were undeveloped? In fact, even with our tourism the workers needed are ones such as waiters, bar tenders, chefs, etc. Little about managers and top end workers.

But of course, this goes back to the ‘silly season’. The upcoming elections will be a hell of a fight, so the more and bigger promises made the more it is hoped that the graduates of the education revolution will be impressed. In efforts to bamboozle the electorate, the graduates of the education revolution, the larger the projects the more they will become impressed. For the others, maybe the traditional lumber and galvanize will play. All of this goes on with a sense of seriousness. One of the things that is seriously missing is critical thinking. Any serious education revolution should have highlighted this.

One other point I want to make but am really cautious about raising it, hoping we will never get to that stage. Some years ago, a professor from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica was speaking here about our crime situation. He said some trends reminded him of how Jamaica started, and he warned us to be extremely careful. He was speaking about the fact that at that time in Jamaica criminal activity had entered the political arena. There is no indication that we are anywhere like that. This we must avoid. But let us renew our efforts to fight crime and get on top of it.

Finally, let us have serious conversations as the political temperature heats up! I believe we can do it.

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian