AN OLIVE branch has been extended to Mia Amor Mottley by her new boss, Owen Arthur – just weeks after she was ousted as Leader of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) by its parliamentary group.
Arthur, speaking to the media yesterday in the Parliament Buildings Yard, was in a confident mood and said he did “not come to tear down and break-up”.
He said it was important to hold the institutions together and apart from holding the country together it was his role as leader of the BLP to hold that party together.
“My role now is to hold the Barbados Labour Party together. And that is what I can do with all my heart and soul. It is a contribution to the democracy of the country. Democracy is so fragile, and people looking on from the outside have these comments to make.
“But political institutions are like families, like clubs, like any other institutions, fracture into barracks and be no more. And you’ve got a duty to hold them together. I want to hold the Labour Party together, and that is my contribution to democracy in this country.”
He said all the candidates ratified under Mottley would stay in place and he would give the former leader a chance to “sort out herself”.
“She is going through difficult times. I respect what she is going through. Then I will deal with Shadow Cabinet matters. For the time being, I will just take over what she is doing and just try to manage,” he said.
In calling for consensus, Arthur said with the death of Prime Minister David Thompson, “our mortality has been exposed”.
“There is too much conflict and controversy and not enough attempt to build a consensus. I had tried through the politics of inclusion to make people [understand] that they can have consensus on the most difficult matters and I hope that out of this [death] will come the perspective that you will have to find consensus.”
He said that it took a death to bring the House of Assembly together.
Arthur also said one of the most fearsome things was to get up every morning and face what was in the media.
Minister of Health Donville Innis (left) and Opposition Leader Owen Arthur exiting the Lower House while engaging each other in banter.