TALE OF TWO LEADERS – MIA AND M.I.A.

MIA Mottley’s speech at the recent COP-27 conference should be required viewing for emerging leaders and students everywhere. 

The charismatic Barbadian leader delivered a broadside against developed countries on the urgent issue of climate change. 

“We were the ones whose blood, sweat, and tears financed the industrial revolution,” the fiery orator told world leaders. 

“Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? 

“That is fundamentally unfair.” 

When the dust cleared, leaders of the major countries agreed to assist small countries in their fight against the ravages of climate change. 

That radical policy change was prompted by the head of one of the smallest countries on earth, a resolute woman admired and respected all over the world. 

Ms. Mottley, picked by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential persons in the world, was shaking up the status quo again and selling the Caribbean’s cause. 

Her brilliance, courage, and brain power were on display once more in championing the issues of small, struggling countries. 

Ms. Mottley is a Caribbean treasure, a revolutionary on current matters impacting developing countries, communicating simply with popular culture. 

“Who will stand up and fight for the rights of our people?” she had said at a previous conference, invoking Bob Marley. 

“She is the embodiment of our conscience,” Time magazine had written. 

In contrast, when Trinidad and Tobago was recently hit with heavy rains, possibly caused by climate change, Ms. Mottley’s Caricom colleague Dr. Keith Rowley had virtually no presence. 

Rowley’s government was disconnected “from the real life of the country,” the Express editorialised. 

“Over and over, the government keeps revealing itself as out of touch and out of step with the need of the people it was elected to govern,” the newspaper said. 

The Express spoke for most of Trinidad and Tobago. 

Rowley, the national leader, was Missing In Action (MIA). 

While Ms. Mottley is proffering viable solutions to challenging global issues, her T&T counterpart is absent from crucial and urgent domestic issues, the epic flood being just the latest example. 

The Bajan boss is dynamic, engaging, and a practical advocate for environmental sustainability and other critical issues of the developing world. 

She deservedly enjoys international adulation. 

She is a role model. 

Just over 200 miles and a half-hour flight away in T&T, the leader is typically laid-back, disengaged, and reactive, even in the face of a crime epidemic and a mounting humanitarian poverty crisis. 

The Express (again!) appropriately sums up “a government that is woefully unresponsive, bereft of empathy, missing in action…” 

A tale of two leaders!