“This is Not Dominica’s Best”: Good Taste and Political Power in Dominica

            Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, the world’s 3rd largest country by total area recently hosted Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister (PM) of the Commonwealth of Dominica, the world’s 188th smallest country. It was the 20th anniversary of Skerrit officially establishing diplomatic relations with China in 2004. This was a most prestigious occasion for Dominica.

            But when Skerrit took to the microphone on one stop, he gave neither a speech nor a lecture but rather sang a song. Not the national anthem. But a bouyon song. Bouyon is an indigenous Dominican popular music genre used for partying or siwo, in Dominica’s indigenous French Lexicon Creole language. To the horror of the Dominican middle-class.  

Skerrit, not a professional artiste sang, ‘From a.m. to p.m. we working/ now it’s siwo time.’

            “This is not Dominica’s best,” one horrified Dominican observer said about Skerrit’s artistic turn in China. If the middle class knew Dominican cultural taste so well why did PM Skerrit seem not to know it, too?

            Here is my take.

            Dominica’s political system and the Eastern Caribbean Model (ECM) in general is based on racial and social class antagonism that is derived from Karl Marx.

            That commentator voiced a middle-class sensitivity. The Eastern Caribbean’s middle class is the economic, social, cultural, and environmental elite. So, that commentator’s voice—not Dominica’s best—carried the authority the middle class has in matters of cultural taste.

            Yet, the ECM works by popular democratic action. Any wise PM takes no action, including singing bouyon in China, unless he is convinced that the action has the support of the ruling Party and the masses of voters. His base—the working class.

            Although Skerrit is from a middle-class family, he is PM primarily because the ruling political elite, the people who determine who rule Dominica are the working class.

            So Skerrit committed a form of social class suicide. Whether the middle class likes it or not, Skerrit caters mainly to the working class ruling political elite. Politically, they’re his bread and butter. His catering to them is Skerrit’s secret sauce. It helps to explain why he has won five consecutive general elections, the most ever in Dominica and why he has served twenty consecutive years in office, the longest ever in Dominica.

            What that commentator saw through their middle-class-tinted glasses as not Dominica’s best was exactly what the ruling political elite saw through their working-class-tinted glasses as the opposite—Dominica’s best.

In taking Dominica’s bouyon not just east coast or west coast but worldwide, Skerrit organized his performance around the emotions of the working class ruling political elite.

            With that, you can bet once again, Skerrit was winning!