COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 13, 2018 — Exactly why a well-respected online news publication like CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW has allowed an irresponsible gadfly like Youri Kemp, who is widely considered to be a political buffoon in The Bahamas, to sully the reputation of their excellent news medium defies believable explanation.
In responding to questions I raised about a commentary he wrote in Caribbean News Now of an alleged sting operation accusing high-ranking members of The Bahamas Immigration Department of accepting bribes, Kemp launched a personal attack on me that included scurrilous and scandalous lies. I am now in the process seeking legal redress via a lawsuit.
I forewarned Kemp about my pending legal action in a post yesterday, which some persons in the Facebook group BAHAMA VOICE seemed to think was for their amusement. Youri Kemp, however, decided to use my comments in that post to justify the reason for his personal attack on me, in which he made this statement: “When I need lessons on how to kill women for money, rip women off for their money and waste/steal Bahamian taxpayers money in a Bahamian consulate and kiss-ass for work, I would ask Ozzie Brown on who I should consult on those matters.”
I contacted the Editors of CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW, via a message on their Facebook page, to advise them about my pending lawsuit and the fact that I have included them as co-defendants.
Their response was an Editorial published November 12, under the headline, “Methinks he doth protest too much.”
It was a well-written editorial, but the writer and Youri Kemp seem to have something in common: either he or she has a limited attention span or is prone to making mistakes.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW editorial:
“During his 12 years in Washington, according to Brown, he and Russell were “both dedicated members of Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church and we interacted with each other every Sunday at Mass”.”
However, here’s what I wrote in my commentary:
“I lived in Freeport, Grand Bahama, for 12 years prior to coming to Washington, D.C., to become the Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at The Bahamas Embassy, and during those 12 years, Mr. Russell and I were both dedicated members of Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church and we interacted with each other every Sunday at Mass.”
Based on what their Editorial stated, readers are led to believe that Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church is in Washington, D.C. and not Freeport, Grand Bahama, where it is located.
Be that as it may, CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW is indeed an excellent online publication; therefore, after doing a little research, I was absolutely amazed that its Editors allowed Youri Kemp, their Associate Editor based in Nassau, to launch a vicious attack against Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley shortly after she became leader of one of the four founding members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1973.
In his commentary published in CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW on October 1, 2018, under the heading, “MOTTLEY – MORE CLOWN THAN CON? A MIX OF BOTH, PERHAPS!,” Youri Kemp wrote:
“While Barbadians and Caribbean folks at large bask in the glow of a female leader taking the helm of one of our beautiful islands, making the honeymoon phase of the new Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration longer than it would normally be, we must now begin to get down to the serious issues that: 1. Barbadians have a life and a country that needs to be healed; 2. Facts need to be set aside from the fiction of the campaign slogans and promises; and 3. Barbadian problems before the elections still exist and need identifiable solutions that can be tracked moving forward.
“Thus far, newly minted prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, a woman on a very short list of women leaders ever to have graced parliament as an elected member, and on an even shorter list of women to be elected as leader of their respective countries, is in the realm of being both clown and con-artist all at the same time.”
What followed was an unbelievable misrepresentation of Mia Mottley’s distinguished career in Barbados politics.
“Let me start off by saying first off: Mottley is no neophyte to the political game in Barbados. Her father was a former member of parliament; in addition she has held cabinet positions in government before and has been a member of parliament for quite some time,” Kemp wrote.
He continued: “Washing the obvious fact that she is a female aside, nothing about her screams of anything other than a regular, every day, run-of-the-mill politician in the old masculine (old boy) mould — in behaviour, deportment, actions, characteristics and in speech. Do not let the physiological aspect of ‘being a woman’ and not having ‘man-bits’ fool you — it is as relevant as or important to the frame of her policy direction as is the colour of her hair.
“The first time Mottley audaciously clowned us is when she responded to claims that her administration had poached the Ross University away from her sister island of Dominica — citing the fact that the country had just not made a sound enough rebound after the devastating Hurricane Maria that destroyed the country in December, 2017. A move she alluded to on Facebook Live was done with the full understanding, knowledge and tacit approval of the prime minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit.
“Prime Minister Skerrit came out and denied ever having any such discussions with Mottley on the relocation of Ross University to Barbados, quite obviously. And anyone would wonder why Skerrit would agree to such a thing when Dominica needs all of the help and economic input it can get?
“Simply put: No one believed Mottley then, and no one believes her fantastic story now. Particularly anyone in the region with a brain-cell. You can pull that on Barbadians who have to live under a one-party rule parliament where you are the constitutionally established dictator, but no one else is obligated to appreciate those statements or movements.”
I suspect that the Ross University controversy is the reason why the Editors at CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW approved Youri Kemp’s assault on Mia Mottley for publication. There is no question that Barbados’ decision to approve the relocation of Ross University to Barbados after the extreme damages caused to its campus in Dominica by Hurricane Maria did not “sit well” with CARICOM Eastern Caribbean members, but in my view that decision did not warrant the “hatchet job” Youri Kemp did on Mia Mottley, including this comment: “The first time Prime Minister Mottley conned us, however, was when she brought in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help stabilize the country after the disastrous economic collapse that was reportedly gripping Barbados under the former Democratic Labour Party (DLP).”
The rest of his commentary continues along this critical trend and he ends it with this statement: “So is Prime Minister Mottley a clown or con? I’d say it is a mix of both, for now. I continue to watch!”
The question that I still find extremely difficult to provide an answer for is this: Why did the Editors of CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW approve that column for publication? Were they overly impressed by the “paper qualifications” cited in information accompanying the commentary?
Granted, this description of Youri Kemp that accompanies the commentary may indeed be accurate: “Youri Aramin Kemp, BA, MSc., CFM, AFA, ChE, is an Associate Editor of Caribbean News Now and the CEO of KEMP GLOBAL, a management consultancy firm based in The Bahamas.”
It is also true, however, that there are a lot of “overly educated” Jackasses in this world? Enough said.
