Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne charged that the Mia Mottley administration is using “pretty talk” that is “painting illusions of prosperity” while many Barbadians struggle to make ends meet, alleging a widening gap between confident ministerial rhetoric and people’s lived reality.
As the House of Assembly debated the Barbados National Energy Company (Transfer and Vesting of Assets) Bill, Thorne said the administration was failing to confront the reality of rising living costs faced by families, small businesses and vendors.
He argued that the progress repeatedly touted by ministers as evidence of a growing economy was not materialising in people’s daily lives.
“The people of this country are struggling badly,” he declared. “I challenge any member in this Parliament to take that walk and go to the top of Swan Street to Tudor Street, and conduct a poll of those persons who vend on that street… They want to survive, and sometimes they even want to thrive. They will tell you that beneath the lofty goal of thriving, they are struggling even to survive.”
Thorne rejected what he saw as the government’s narrative of national prosperity.
He said: “If the government seeks to persuade people in this country that there is some prosperity visiting in this country, it has not come to those people who vend on Swan Street.”
He added: “The people of this country are being served with false stories of this country’s prosperity. It becomes a cruel joke when the people of this country continue to suffer as badly as they are.”
He accused Cabinet members of returning to Parliament every week “in self‑congratulation, with false stories of success” while ignoring testimony from people “as to what they’re enduring”.
Thorne also took aim at what he described as a recurring government tactic of selling attractive policy slogans without substance: “My statement is that this government’s use of fancy words [is] to beguile people. A few years ago the word was ‘sustainable’, everything was sustainable… then the following year, oh, it is ‘resilient’. Then we move from sustainable to resilient, and then everything is in the ‘ecosystem’. The latest one now [is] a ‘whole‑of‑country approach’.”
He described this as “the sale of pretty words that bear no substance, that bear no real relationship to the suffering of the people in this country”.
According to Thorne, the reluctance to acknowledge hardships while praising policy initiatives was concerning, stating: “This government does not want to hear that people in this country are suffering because it will remind the government of its failure.”
He warned that continued disconnect between official narratives and lived reality would deepen public apathy, saying Barbadians “will not be comforted by speeches” when their daily economic pressures remain unchanged.
(SB)
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