Barbados Elections: Elections People Lose
By William Skinner
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| The Barbados Flag |
This election clearly demonstrated that the fed-up level,
with both the Barbados Labour Party and the Democratic Labour party is rising;
the electorate, caught between a rock and a hard place, decided that the money offered
“to be put back in their pockets’ by the Barbados Labour Party, was not enough
to convince them that they should bring the Bees back into office. They worried
about the transport being privatized and pensioners having to pay bus fares;
they worried about the Sanitation Services being privatized and having to pay for
garbage removal. A people under the heavy yoke of a recession, that is not
going away, are very circumspect. So, Stuart went out there and reminded them
about schools that the Democratic Labour Party built and told the voters that
while money in their pockets is good, their character and understanding the
value of a vote are more important. A less colorful but more effective message
in the end.
On the other hand, Owen Arthur did his best to convince the
voters that he could revitalize the economy. Unfortunately for Arthur, he
depended on a non-candidate, economist Clyde Mascoll, to be his real messenger.
I have posited many times that Mascoll, his scholarship notwithstanding, is a
political liability and that his credibility as a politician is a real issue.
Having Mascoll headline platforms was a political blunder of monumental
proportions, taking into consideration that Mia Mottley seemed to have been
pushed aside. In all fairness to Arthur he tried but he was also leading very
new candidates some of whom were selected during Mottley’s tenure as opposition
leader.
In the final analysis, when stripped of all the talk about Wickham’s
polls and the CLICO debacle, this election was basically free of any serious
discourse. The failure of Arthur and Stuart to have a public debate was a grave
and deliberate insult to the electorate. That showed they were not taking
the populace very seriously. We were subjected to some of the vilest and most
embarrassing nonsense ever heard on political platforms from both parties. We
learnt that the thirty candidates had not grasped anything about the new world
economic order brought on by the crippling recession. We were treated to
nothing more than entertainment. The parties, rather than seriously engage each
other, opted for presentation and no content.
It was not a violent campaign and many will honestly conclude
that the close margin was a victory for the people. I respectfully submit that
thinking citizens are still waiting on a real debate about how to carry
Barbados forward. The only thing that the close outcome proves is that the
BLP/DLP is very close in every respect. I was told by one of our most
influential politicians that the House of assembly is a “club”. And that is why
I contend that we have a sophisticated one party state. Why not use this
numerical closeness to form a government of national reconstruction?
However, unlike the election mentioned at the beginning,
there were no acts of violence and while the wearing of yellow and red is
starting to bother some; I opine that if we cannot put on a tee shirt of our
party’s choice, we are really in a bad place. Quite frankly I prefer the tee
shirts to the violence on my ears emanating from mouths quite unfamiliar with
public speaking and equally unfamiliar with the real issues. From that point of view it was indeed, an election that people lose.
William Skinner is a commentator on Caribbean cultural and
political matters.
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