BARBADIANS MAY HAVE FACED one of their toughest general elections May 24 since becoming independent. It may even have been as tough as the one faced by their American neighbours far to the north in 2016.
The choice felt familiarly limited: between a man more concerned with how he would be viewed by history on the one hand and, on the next, a woman long in the political trenches possibly attempting to fulfill her own destiny.
The real decision for Barbadians on Election Day was the stewardship of their country for the next five years. It was an uneasy one.
While Democratic Labour Party incumbent Freundel Stuart—alternately remote, cocksure, and preoccupied with legacy—had done little in the eyes of many to earn the continued confidence of the electorate, Mia Mottley as Barbados Labour Party Opposition leader, others said, had done no more—apart from, arguably, a few stagey, party-led public protests—to earn the privilege to succeed him.
Whoever was elected would have to do a better job of leading the people of this country out of immediate and foreseeable crises.
Mottley won, and with a tremendous majority: all of the 30 seats in Parliament. She is Barbados’ first female prime minister and its eighth overall. The 52-year-old former attorney general, education and culture minister, and daughter of a dominant political family has spent almost half her life in elective politics. She must feel as if she has finally arrived, but she’ll have to do more than show up for the job.
It wasn’t just the BLP in the running. The names of the new political parties to blossom, as if in a velvet spring, reflect in part the frustrations of Barbadians with Stuart’s beleaguered administration specifically and politics as established in this country in general.
The United Progressive Party and Solutions Barbados were seen as potential frontrunners. Then there were the Barbados Integrity Movement, the Bajan Free Party, the People’s Democratic Congress, the Kingdom Government of Barbados, the Progressive Conservative Party—and a string of ten independent candidates.
If not protest parties, they were and may yet be parties with a message for whoever will form the next government: You need to listen to the people. Consult with the people. Talk to the people. Unite the people.
That’s if Barbados is to find a way out of the deep economic, social and infrastructural problems currently afflicting it.
Stuart’s tactic to allow the dissolution of Parliament March 6 without calling elections (to make history “by doing things differently,” he claimed), then to be cagey about when the election date would be set (constitutionally, he had ninety days from the dissolution of Parliament), afforded him scant advantage strategically at the polls.
Whether this particular silly season was long or short, the issues vexing Barbadians remain to be resolved. Among them are regular garbage collection, more buses for public transportation, and the repair of badly potholed roads up and down the country’s 166 square miles.
Government’s inability to stem the effluent bubbling from the sewers along the touristy south coast over the last several months had also become a metaphor for political corruption, incompetence and long-whispered graft finally coming to light.
Economically, the country is burdened by public debt, and depleted foreign-exchange reserves have put at risk government’s ability to repay its foreign loans. Repeated credit-rating downgrades have left Barbados less attractive to foreign investors, too—and increasingly vulnerable to International Monetary Fund intervention.
Any honeymoon Mia and the BLP might expect will be short. There’s simply too much to do, and too much at stake for all Barbadians right now. From January 1 this year, the BLP were pasting candidates’ posters to light and telephone poles, opening up shuttered constituency offices, and walking around neighbourhoods, chatting up voters. The campaigning is over, not the job to which they were elected.
We repeat: Listen to your people. Consult with your people. Talk to your people. Unite your people. A number of the “other” parties suggested this can be done through the creative industries, better business practices, religious and moral guidance, and plain old good sense. Whatever the best approach, Barbadians must have a sense of moving together if they are to move forward again.
The Editors
