MINISTER OF HEALTH DONVILLE INNISS has urged Barbadians to pay keen attention to the low level of politics to which some members of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party [BLP] are willing to descend.
While noting Government was unwaveringly focused on the prudent management of the country’s economy, improving the lot of all Barbadians, and not on the BLP, Inniss said it would be unwise for anyone to turn a deaf ear to the complaints of St James North MP Rawle Eastmond and former Opposition Leader Mia Mottley about voter-rigging at the branch level within their party.
Eastmond has complained over the past weeks that padding of his branch membership occurred in an attempt to influence the selection of delegates and the voting process for a BLP chairman.
At the party’s recent annual general conference, Mottley withdrew her bid for chairmanship of the party after highlighting irregularities in the delegates’ selection process at the branch level and also within the party’s Women’s League.
Mottley was ousted last month as BLP leader by the vote of former Prime Minister Owen Arthur, party chairman George Payne, Gline Clarke, Ronald Toppin and Dale Marshall.
“If members of the Barbados Labour Party are willing to pad membership and voting lists at their party level, one can only imagine what they would do if they held on to the reins of Government. What happened is a manifestation of what they are capable of doing at the national level,” Inniss said.
“You also have a situation where two men were prepared to put aside years of bitterness against each other just to get rid of one woman for someone who can best be described as a brand new second-hand car with all the defects of the old model,” Inniss said yesterday.
The St James South MP, who noted that both Payne and Arthur were his constituents, added he did not expect to see their seemingly amicable relationship “last too long”.
Inniss added that he expected Arthur to step back into the background before the next general election. (WG)
