ACCORDING to the West Indian Dictionary, a poppy show is a person or thing that looks ridiculous. That’s certainly not a noun which we would want to apply to those that lead us. But when we read the remarks that our prime minister, Mr Bruce Golding, made to the eighth annual Caribbean MBA conference last Wednesday, our options seem frighteningly narrow. Coupled with the rest of his speech, which seems to have consisted of nothing new, or newsworthy, the unflattering conclusion seems inevitable.

According to Friday’s edition of the Daily Observer, Mr Golding told the conference that his way of dealing with the stresses of the job he fought for so spiritedly three years ago, was to head to the kitchen and cook them away.

Nothing’s wrong with that. In fact, in some other context — say an informal session with his compadres — it might even pass for cute.

But we expect sensible leaders to have a sense of occasion.

And with every due respect to our prime minister, we think that his cooking revelation, coming as it did against the background of what cannot be classified by any standard as a successful reign so far, was rather queer, to put it mildly.

This was, after all, an important conference sponsored by important business interests whom we are sure would like to be taken seriously.

Unless their invitation to him was part and parcel of a big joke, or the birth of some sort of Bilderberg-like chatfest, we think he might have taken the trouble to come up with a more significant speech.

Instead of celebrating the fact that his administration has not begun to exploit brand Jamaica despite its formidable strength, our prime minister might have given us an update on the measures that are to be taken concerning our intellectual property.

Instead of babbling on about the collapse of sugar, bananas, the American economy, he might have used the opportunity to give us the latest appropriate update on the status of the country’s pending relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For that, really, is what we are interested in right now.

We want to be assured that our relationship with the IMF does not totally annihilate us, that after we swallow the bitter medicine, something, by way of cure, reaches us.

We want to be assured that we are not on our way to relegation to the casualty heap of international spectacles that serve case studies for those studying failed states.

After those assurances have been given, we maybe will be better able to tolerate what appears to be a case of kin teet kibba heart bun, or better yet, join him in the kitchen.