Tomorrow’s nomination of candidates for Jan.15 poll
By Rickey Singh
TOMORROW, BARBADIANS will move one day closer to that journey that voters of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago took within the past four months for scheduled national elections:

It would be Nomination Day for a January 15 poll that is being profiled by politicians and commentators in local media as Barbados’ “mother of all elections” since Independence 41 years ago.

Having surprised the nation with his voting date announcement on December 20, amid frenzied Christmas shopping, current third-term Prime Minister Owen Arthur has fixed Old Year’s day for nomination of candidates for the 30-member House of Assembly.

The 58-year-old economist, leader of the incumbent Barbados Labour Party (BLP), who currently holds lead responsibility for readiness-arrangements for CARICOM’s Single Market and Economy (CSME), is hoping to create local history with an anticipated and unprecedented fourth consecutive term of state power.

That is a hope his archrival for power, David Thompson, the 46-year-old lawyer and leader of the opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP)–known for his platform eloquence and waspish tongue against opponents–has been offering trademark invectives like: “Arthur’s shelf-life has long expired….time for change”.

For his part, Arthur, passionate with warlike rhetoric when he thinks he has had enough of the politicking of opponents, had a chilling warning at his recent nomination to remain representative for the St. Peter constituency:

“I am motivated in a special way”, he told his constituents, “by the determination never to see the DLP hold the reins of office again in this country…”

The mood, therefore, seems set for a battle royal for which of the two dominant parties should be entrusted to conduct the affairs of Barbados for the next five years.

Traditionally, there has been a two-term syndrome for both parties, with the first exception of three terms for the DLP taking place under the leadership of the late Errol Barrow, father of independence”, and currently the BLP’s expiring third term.

Question is whether the Prime Minister’s vow of never wanting to see the DLP’s return to power—after being in opposition since 1994–was a display of political bravado or an unintended betrayal of nervousness over a likely change in government against the backdrop of recent opinion polls?

Those polls have pointed to a close race with national swings of approximately five to seven percent in favour of the DLP, but with Arthur’s personal popularity rating at a whopping 26 percent higher than Thompson’s.

Strategists and campaign managers for both parties have been doing what their counterparts in other electoral democracies in the region have done earlier this year, including Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago–interpreting poll results to confirm to their own expectations.

Consequently, the DLP’s General Secretary, Chris Sinckler, who has been heading the Barbados-based regional non-government organisation, Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC), was bold enough to openly boast a week ago today that it was “deceptive” of pollsters to speak of a “close race” for the January 15 election sweepstake.

For him, the DLP is now heading, after a year of intense work in the constituencies, for a “landslide victory” with 20 of the 30 parliamentary seats.

Mottley’s jeer
By contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Mia Mottley, regarded as one of the most crafty politicians of the governing party, and one of its more ferocious platform speakers, has jeeringly retorted that the DLP simply cannot overcome the fact that its leader (Thompson) was “significantly trailing” the BLP’s leader and Prime Minister in national popularity rating.

The two-week campaign that follows tomorrow’s nomination of candidates, with both of the traditional competitors for state power fielding a full slate, would be the shortest and possibly the most intensely bitter and bruising of election campaigns in this popular tourist resort in the Eastern Caribbean.

On Boxing Day, while Barbadians at large were continuing their post-Christmas festivities, the strategists of the BLP and DLP were locked in preparatory meetings for the official kick-off of the election campaign with the completion of nomination of candidates.

They both have in place their propaganda machinery that, respectively, includes former well-known local journalists, and publication materials to influence hearts and minds.

For the ruling BLP, the election publication would include highlights of the policies and programmes that have placed Barbados at the apex of the human development index in this hemisphere as a comparatively well managed economy, with impressive examples in social and economic gains.

By comparison, and consistent with multi-party parliamentary politics, the opposition DLP’s focus would be on reminding voters about the real and perceived shortcomings of the three-term BLP administrations; and why it does not deserve another five years in office.

Accusing fingers
Accusing fingers are busy pointing to lack of transparency in fiscal management; nepotism, failures in sectors of health and housing, as well as complaints heard in other jurisdictions about crime and rising cost of food prices and general cost of living.

Prime Minister Arthur has boastfully retorted about “feeling no pressures from the DLP…I am calm…composed and confident (of victory)”, he told a media briefing on Wednesday at which he also claimed to have “the best team of cabinet ministers in the Caribbean..” His counterparts in CARICOM should know that Arthur said that without a smile!

Meanwhile, the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) has reported its readiness for polling day, armed with an updated electoral roll of some 233,289–about 10,000 more than the last general election in 2003.

At that May 21, 2003 poll, the BLP secured 23 of the 30 constituencies with 62,294 votes or almost 55 percent of the votes cast. The DLP’s seven seats were secured with 54,746 votes or approximately 45 percent.

The Dems subsequently suffered the shocked defection to the government by Clyde Mascoll, who is now locked in a bitter duel with the DLP’s Chris Sinckler to defending the St. Michael North-West constituency he won in 2003.

A lot of money, energy and overflow of bitterness will combine to make this Mascoll/Sinckler duel a primary focus of the January 15 poll.

Almost 43 percent of the valid electorate did not bother to cast their ballots at the last election, compared with the estimated 37 percent who had stayed away at the January 20, 1999, poll when the BLP won its second term with a landslide 26-2 victory for a then 28-member House.