The past few days were intriguing, to say the least. First, we heard that a Cabinet decision was made to replace Independence Day with Barbados National Day.After a huge uproar on social media, the call-in programmes and elsewhere, the day after we heard that the decision would be carried back to Cabinet. Today, we were told Cabinet reversed the decision and Independence Day, as we know it, remains, for now.Amusing, though, is that Government spokesman Wilfred Abrahams said: “I am a member of the Government that listens and as we have done in the past we have listened to the voice of the people.”If that were totally true there would have been a forum for the people to speak and maybe vote on becoming a Republic and on which day to celebrate that occasion. Both of those decisions were made without the input of the people.But there were two things that happened that were heartening for democracy.