THE EDITOR, Madam:DAWN Ritch's article "Caribbean court of Corruption", Sunday, December 3, has been a new and sorry experience for me. Seldom, if ever, have I read an article written by a supposedly leading journalist, of your newspaper with such bitter vituperatives and personal abuse. Our Prime Minister is the "little country boy" suffering a "terrible inferiority complex". Prime Minister Arthur of Barbados has a short man complex puffed up beyond his own importance. She went on relentlessly to condemn the entire Caribbean electorate who can be bought with a little money from the slush fund of almost any international company.
I don't know what nationality is Dawn Ritch but if she is a Caribbean person, doesn't she feels a sense of shame that our Caribbean people, although small, lack basic decency and dignity! Surely, you don't have to be powerful like the United States, which she extolled, for you to possess colonialist.
It seems to me that Ritch would be quite happy to remain a colonialist. Which is the greater responsibility? To elect your own leaders, manage all your affairs, or to replace the Privy Council with a Caribbean Court of Appeal? Dawn seems to contradict herself when she admits that our Supreme Courts and the Court of Appeal perform well, yet if and when these same judges are elevated to a Caribbean Court, they become corrupt and politically tainted.
We recall some years ago when our late National Hero Norman Manley was advocating for self-government, one of the English officials sent out to enquire and report back to his political masters; Manley was asked when is one fit for self-government, his response, "When he thinks he is fit". Dawn Ritch speaks loftily of "Her Majesty's Privy Council". Time moves on. We do not wish to relive our colonial past.
Let us be friends and equal partners with the U.K. systems of business, education and judiciary. Let us have robust debate but do not descend into cheap personal vilification. Dawn Ritch can emigrate to the U.K. Or the U.S. We will remain here and attain our total independence.
I am, etc.,
ARTHUR S. BYFIELD
St. Mary.
