- 5 new CARICOM Govts in 6 elections
By Rickey Singh
WITH LAST Tuesday’s defeat of the Barbados Labour Party administration, it is increasingly looking as if the victory scored by the People’s National Movement in Trinidad and Tobago to retain power at the recent November 5 poll may be an aberration in a perceived political wind of change sweeping away governments within the Caribbean Community.

In this column last Sunday, I raised the question whether Barbados’ January 15 general election would result in a fourth change of government among independent CARICOM member countries within a 13-month period that started with the defeat of the second term St. Lucia Labour Party administration.

Well, the change did occur, ending with a vengeance the three-term administration of former Prime Minister Owen Arthur, who was seeking an unprecedented fourth term.

In a stunning reversal of political fortunes, the BLP suffered a painful defeat by David Thompson’s Democratic Labour Party which was given a strong 20-10 mandate to govern the country for the next five years.

Thompson will be announcing his first cabinet tomorrow to coincide with the birth anniversary of the DLP’s founder and National Hero Errol Walton Barrow.

If the victory of the opposition Virgin Islands Party at last August 20 general election in the British Virgin Islands is added to the change last Tuesday’s outcome in Barbados, it would mean that there have been five changes in government at six national elections within 13 months in CARICOM, of which the BVI is an Associated State. The other changes took place in The Bahamas and Jamaica.

GUYANA: For some local significance, it would have been noted that in congratulating Thompson on the DLP’s return to government, the PNCR of Robert Corbin chose the opportunity to remind him that “the basis now exists for an intensification” of former “close association…” for the two parties to work together.

That’s okay in party politics. The reality is that fundamental changes have taken place not just in Barbados and Guyana since the PNC and DLP lost power, or since a young Thompson had visited Guyana as part of a team of ‘Young Democrats” of the Dems when both Corbin and today’s President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, were engaging in largely ‘youth politics’..

The changes are profound—all around in the Caribbean— as would be known to strategists and power seekers in the opposition and governing parties of both Barbados and Guyana, and CARICOM in general.

Here, for now, the governing PPP/C, which won a fourth consecutive term in August 2006, appears quite firmly settled, with more than four years still to go before a new general election that could see new leaders at the helm of both the PNCR and PPP/C as presidential candidates.

In CARICOM countries where elections are due later this year, do not expect either the government of Prime Minister Said Musa in Belize or that of Prime Minister Keith Mitchell’s in Grenada to agree, but indications point to likely changes in government at coming elections in both these CARICOM member countries.

BELIZE: Earlier this month, Prime Minister Musa announced fresh general election for next month, on February 7. At last 2003 general election his incumbent People’s United Party (PUP) won a second term with a very convincing 22–7 parliamentary majority.

Now its challenger for power, Dean Barrow’s United Democratic Party (UDP), thinks the conditions exist for it to be swept into power by a perceived changed mood of the electorate. With the addition of two new constituencies, the battle by Musa’s PUP and Barrow’s UDP will be for a 31-member elected parliament.

GRENADA: In Grenada, where Prime Minister Mitchell has been facing increasing demands from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of Tillman Thomas to call fresh election–constitutionally due in November this year–an announcement of such a development could well come when the governing New National Party (NNP) holds its annual convention that’s scheduled for January 27.

Crucial Difference
A crucial difference between Musa’s quest for a third term government and that of Mitchell’s bid for a fourth consecutive term is that the former had secured his March 2003 electoral victory not just with a landslide 22-seat majority, but with 53 percent of the valid popular votes.

In contrast, the latter had survived defeat by a one-seat margin (8 to 7) and with less than 50 percent of the votes cast (48 percent NNP to the NDC’s 45.06 percent) for the 15-member House of Representatives.

That one-seat majority that came from Carriacou by a mere six votes, had been unsuccessfully challenged and Mitchell’s NNP has been engaged since in strenuous political manoeuvres to maintain stability in governance amid natural and man-made disasters.

Not unexpectedly, Prime Minister Mitchell was quick to declare, following the defeat of Arthur’s government in Barbados, that he did not recognise the changing administrations as any political wind of change blowing across CARICOM.

We have sixteen days from today to find out what the case would be in Belize on February 7, and then to find out later when Grenada’s 2008 general election will take place.

Barbados scenario
In relation to what occurred last Tuesday in Barbados, if I may borrow a line with adaptation from President Bill Clinton, it was “the mood for change, stupid”. Not the ‘economy’; not ‘leadership’, as touted by the incumbent BLP that resulted in the dramatic change in the Barbadian political landscape.

The trouncing of Arthur’s incumbent BLP by a united and reinvigorated DLP with a 20-10 parliamentary victory, underscored how very badly the ‘Bees’ read the political temperature and for which he has paid a very heavy price–though by no means disgraced.

To bring into a 2008 general election campaign the advertising blitz and US presidential-style politicking with a leadership theme that had served it well for both a second and third term in its bid to create history with a fourth consecutive victory, was to demonstrate a surprising disconnect by the BLP’s strategists with an electorate that has a history of mixing loving embraces with hostile rejections.

Ten years after he had led this country into political independence, Errol Walton Barrow, ‘Father of the Nation’, was to suffer the pain of such a rejection back in September 1976 when he was confident that his outstanding leadership stature and the prevailing social and economic stability would propel him to an unprecedented fourth term victory.

Some 32 years later, the only other Barbadian politician who, like Barrow, had the honour of heading three consecutive governments, Owen Seymour Arthur—undoubtedly one of the best Prime Ministers and leaders of CARICOM–was to repeat that error of judgement, although priding himself as a good political student of “Barrowism”.

That error by him and his campaign strategists holds a significant explanation why last Tuesday’s election has left Arthur, Barbados’ fifth Prime Minister, mulling his future out of power, and David Thompson as the country’s sixth Prime Minister, currently shaping his first cabinet.

For all the political gimmickry, the lavish expenditures on sustained saturated media blitz–by both the Dems and Bees–as well as the indecencies associated with “money politics” for votes in various constituencies, it was the intoxicating “time for change” mood that, in the final analysis, triumphed over the incumbent’s twin focus during a very intense two-week campaign–”leadership that matters” and “economic performance” record.

Back in 1976, when Barrow had failed to achieve a fourth term victory, the DLP was reduced to seven seats in a then 24-member House of Assembly–a painful reversal from its 18-6 victory against the BLP at the previous 1971 election.

Now, in 2008, the BLP, which had secured a massive 23-7 majority at the 2003 election, has been dispatched by the electorate with 10 seats and with nine of cabinet ministers among the 20 defeated candidates.

Owen Arthur was philosophical in his acceptance of defeat, praising the democratic process that remains such a sturdy feature of governance in this Eastern Caribbean state; and noting that “in the 69 years of our party, we have gone this way before…”

The cycle of electoral victories and defeats in Barbados seems to suggest that today’s parties and politicians should be more mindful of the nature of the beast that is the Barbadian electorate with a renowned capacity to love–for as long as 10 or even 15 years—only to later resort, if so disturbed, with a vengeful rejection with transparency.