Weekly Column

“A good leader inspires men to have confidence in him.
A great leader inspires men to have confidence in themselves.”

Confidence is one of those peculiar human qualities that, fortune aside, most determines life’s winners and losers. Its absence can thwart genius while its over abundance can mushroom into arrogance and conceit. It can be harnessed for defense or used to attack. In its purest, most powerful form it can be wonderfully contagious.

Imagine if you will the sight of Viv Richards swaggering out to the wicket to stare down Lillee or Willis, helmetless and fearless, armed only with his trusty willow, feline reflexes and a consummate belief in his own ability to send that little red ball to the boundary.

Or Muhammad Ali whose graceful feet and lighting fast hands were bolstered by an equally taunting tongue. As a professional athlete he took self-confidence to a new level.

Think too about Sir Winston Churchill, whose words inspired a nation to overcome and conquer the Nazi juggernaut when Europe had already capitulated.

Confidence is an important ingredient in national affairs. It is often the difference between success and misery in trying times. It is an intangible by which we measure ourselves and by which we are measured in the eyes of others.

Errol Barrow was confident in our ability to succeed and prosper as a fledgling nation. As a people Barbadians took his lead.

Tom Adams inspired us as a nation to stand up for the rule of law when murder and banditry threatened our friends and neighbours.

Owen Arthur made us believe that we were the equals of any nation in the world by dismissing the IMF and by standing up to the WTO on blacklisting and to the United States on Shiprider.

These leaders imparted confidence both by their words and their actions - the confidence of their own people and the confidence of friends, allies and investors around the world.

We must now ask ourselves how confident we are as a nation of overcoming the current challenges that we face and what messages we have been receiving that will either weaken or strengthen our resolve.

Our Prime Minister in his second press conference asked us to accept that we are in a crisis. Surely we already knew this. Amazingly, he then asked us to act like we were in a crisis. So where does that leave us? Do we head for the hills and batten down the hatches? Do we stop investing? Do we worry about our jobs? Do we go back to the bad old days of ‘cut and contrive?’

Not a word from him of meeting the challenges head on, or of unleashing Barbadian ingenuity and enterprise to overcome the challenges, nothing tangible to inspire a proactive response. His underwhelming defense was “I am not an economist.” We wonder whether he knows that one should never state the obvious.

More incredibly, his Press Secretary appeared shortly thereafter to invite various interest groups to bring their shopping lists and come.

Next, his office Minister, Senator McClean berates the private sector for not making a single suggestion to lower the cost of living and his Minister of Tourism, Richard Sealy tells a regional conference of disaster response managers that our mass casualty programme is a joke and lord help us if we ever have a disaster at the air or sea port. Goodness gracious! Something must have been in gear here before something else.

Our simple point is that confidence is something that oozes from within. If the Prime Minister were confident in his own ability to take us through the crisis there would not be such a pervading climate of uncertainty and in some quarters fear.