Hinds, “Young politicians more backward …”

An outspoken social commentator has boldly stated that young people who enter politics, in the Caribbean, are even more “backwards” than their predecessors.”
Dr. David Hinds, professor of African and Caribbean Studies at the Arizona State University, made the assertion on Sunday during the Big Issues programme on OBSERVER Radio.
He was asked his opinion based on the fact that more and more young people are now expressing interest in entering the political arena.
“The young people that are coming in now, they know all about technology, but technology is not leadership. You have to come into politics with ideas, but those ideas have to be grounded in the larger history of the society and the young people, nowadays don’t care for those things,” Dr. Hinds explained.
To support his argument, Dr. Hinds referenced a former leader in his native Guyana and the current Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
 “In Guyana, we had a young leader, he was 36-plus, he has turned out to be the worst leader in the post-colonial history of not only Guyana but the Caribbean. We have the prime minister of Jamaica right now and he has gone right back to the anti-Caricom ideas of the 1950s that Jamaica had. So, there is no magic in youth.”
 
Dr. Hinds stressed that a new cadre of young people should be created, through public awareness and the formal education system, to come into the political field with a sense of consciousness of the Caribbean, its place in the world order, the Caribbean history and what it has to offer the world.
“I am afraid we are not giving the young people that {sort of training}, and so when they come into politics they turn out to be more backward than the older people they are replacing,” Dr. Hinds concluded.
(More in today’s Daily Observer)