It may very well be that pro­fes­sors Sel­wyn Cud­joe, Ken Ram­c­hand and the “Heavy Roller” Ho­choy Charles are all de­serv­ing of the coun­try’s high­est award. How­ev­er, once again giv­en in a very po­lit­i­cal frame, ef­fec­tive­ly by the Prime Min­is­ter, who­ev­er that in­di­vid­ual may be, the sys­tem nat­u­ral­ly gen­er­ates the claim of po­lit­i­cal bias.

And notwith­stand­ing ar­gu­ments to the con­trary and bold state­ments by Pro­fes­sor Cud­joe, who is re­al­ly the one tar­get­ed for the charge of po­lit­i­cal bias, that he does not care about his de­trac­tors, the po­lit­i­cal smell of the choice-mak­ing of the award as­sails the nos­trils in a nau­seous man­ner and ob­vi­ous­ly an­noys Pro­fes­sor Cud­joe.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tion to the awards, whether giv­en by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment or the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in gov­ern­ment, cheap­ens recog­ni­tion and im­pacts neg­a­tive­ly on what should be a time of na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of the coun­try’s achiev­ers. The process al­so cor­rupts the na­tion and makes it less of a stur­dy, re­spect­ed in­sti­tu­tion which speaks for the whole in such mat­ters as recog­ni­tion of those who have served the coun­try with dis­tinc­tion. What the bla­tant nepo­tism al­so does is to fur­ther en­trench cor­rup­tion in the na­tion.

That the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in gov­ern­ment have con­sis­tent­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly and with un­car­ing bold­ness kept the pow­er of pa­tron­age against con­sis­tent calls for de­politi­cis­ing the awards sys­tem by re­mov­ing it far from the prime min­is­ter to an in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee to ad­ju­di­cate up­on who is wor­thy, smacks of con­tempt by the po­lit­i­cal elite for the pop­u­la­tion.

At an­oth­er lev­el of the award dis­tri­b­u­tion is when in this in­stance, an achiev­er, a con­trib­u­tor, one whose un­de­ni­able in­ven­tion of the so­ca which has trans­formed the na­tive ca­lyp­so, that is Ras Shorty I, could on­ly at­tract a Hum­ming Bird Medal Gold, then some­thing must be wrong with the sys­tem of recog­nis­ing those who have made con­tri­bu­tions which have im­pact­ed not on­ly lo­cal­ly but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and over gen­er­a­tions and con­tin­ues so to do.

At an­oth­er lev­el is the mem­o­ry of the Grand­mas­ter Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts) and mas­ter artist Leroy Clarke, two un­de­ni­ably great con­trib­u­tors, feel­ing so dis­re­spect­ed that they had re­fused less than the high­est awards of the na­tion.

Then there was the in­stance of one of the coun­try’s great­est labour lead­ers, Tubal Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler, who rev­o­lu­tionsed the rights of work­ers here and across the Caribbean, be­ing over­tak­en in re­ceiv­ing an award by an­oth­er but­ler, the one who served Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.

That the three ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties which have been in of­fice since In­de­pen­dence have ig­nored the log­ic of lodg­ing the se­lec­tion of de­serv­ing na­tion­als for awards to an in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee, which will re­ceive re­quests, re­search on its own, com­plete­ly be­yond be­ing in­flu­enced by the gov­ern­ment and po­lit­i­cal par­ties, is yet an­oth­er in­stance of nar­row po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests pre­vail­ing over na­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions. It’s sim­ply dis­re­spect­ful to the na­tion.

In the talk which goes around and comes around amongst the politi­cians and their po­lit­i­cal par­ties about na­tion build­ing, con­tin­u­ing re­fusal to build a na­tion to­geth­er in fair­ness and in­tegri­ty is thus cheap ole talk.

Is it that on­ly cleav­age to a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and cul­ture will al­low for the work of cit­i­zens to be recog­nised and so be able to nour­ish na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment? We should have long passed that stage.