Dominica Opposition Performative Politics Bamboozles UWI Academic
In this era of The Matrix, fake news, and artificial intelligence, academics would be wise to verify before commenting how data they did not generate relate to the whole truth.
In politics, today, for example, there is performative activism. It’s about growing the activist’s likes rather than growing their commitment to certain virtues, say, passing as democratic while inciting riots.
In Dominica politics, in 2022, a brother of then Opposition and United Workers Party (UWP) Leader Lennox Linton explained the rationale for the UWP boycotting the general elections. It was “to embarrass the regime” and “remove all legitimacy,” he told an opposition-friendly radio station. In fact, UWP boycotted the snap election after it was caught headless because Linton resigned in a fit of rage. UWP then turned around and sold their boycott as a principled stand against dictatorship. That’s performative activism.
That con game worked. Commentators condemned Dominica’s snap election even if it is constitutional. The UK and Canada just did it. UK Prime Minister (PM) called a snap election for July 4, 2025. While Canada’s PM called a snap election there for April 28, 2025 after being sworn into office in March. In 2000, Dominica’s UWP Government did it, too. And lost.
On March 19, 2025, the same UWP performed a violent protest, including assaulting police, and sold it overseas as freedom to assemble and express dissent being suppressed by the State. In 1979, protester Phillip Timothy was shot dead. In 2025, the police response was restrained even if it produced striking images of conflict that went viral.
This time, the UWP con game bamboozled a high prestige influential, a UWI academic, who went so far out on a limb commenting, he exceeded the evidence for his claims. I am complaining here of use of words attributed to Professor Don Marshall by Shanna Moore in the Barbados Today of March 21, 2025.
Professor Don Marshall appears to have picked one side of the barricades, positioning the protesters as, “ordinary demonstrators,” exercising “the right to assembly or dissent,” and “to voice their frustrations.”
The professor’s gaze seems to have averted those on the other side of the barricades. As reported by Moore, Marshall found that, “Dominican police justified their action by deeming the protest unlawful due to the absence of official permission” and charged the police with “excessive force,” even an “egregious use of force on the part of the Dominican State,” conflating the police with “the Dominican State.”
Professor Marshall ended with an ominous warning: “This is not the season to test Caribbean people.”
Professor Marshall has the right to trust the images and the polemical words of UWP leaders he received. However, as a researcher and professor, he was ethically and professionally bound to verify. Had he verified, for example, that more than a “lack of official permission,” the organizers planned a protest but refused to seek police permission, I am convinced by the evidence that is publicly available, that his conclusions would be different.
The working class professionals in the police force deserve equal consideration from high prestige influentials in regional universities as do protesters.
