The year 2010 will be remembered as a difficult year for Barbados. Particularly fresh in the collective memory will be the wounds of the last quarter inflicted by the Campus Trendz killings, the death of a popular Prime Minster, the ravages of Tropical Storm Tomas, and the uncertainties unleashed by the leadership associated changes in the two main political parties.
Undoubtedly, the new Stuart administration has weathered the slings and arrows of this outrageous period without difficulty. The post-Thompson transition was smooth, with any misgivings by a small minority effectively muffled. Significantly, the public sympathy from Thompson’s death has served as a second honeymoon, affording Stuart the space to get his refurbished house in order. Contrast the soft-glove approach by the Opposition during the December debate on CLICO with the long-knife approach that marked the no-confidence motion brought against Thompson over the very CLICO issue.
However, Stuart’s honeymoon will not spill over too far into 2011. The critical issue in the year ahead will be the economy. Indeed, accompanying all of the trials experienced in 2010 was persistent economic uncertainty, which hung like permanent “dark clouds”, blighting the public mood. With the presentation of the Financial Statement in November, those clouds were pushed closer to landfall. Whether they bring a light drizzle or a terrible deluge will depend on the pace of recovery of the global economy. Stuart and Barbados must therefore brace for the worst.
In the meantime, Stuart can create a lasting legacy if he is able to structurally adjust the country away from its current mode of insertion in the global economy. This is a tall order, which requires the building of national consensus on a new direction and the development and application of fresh ideas. So far, it is low-level political survival and political competition, and reactive short-term economic responses which appear to be uppermost.
This may be understandable, given the fact that it is the pace of the economic recovery that will determine the appeal of the Opposition in the eyes of the Barbadian voter. It is the BLP’s awareness of this reality that partly explains the return of Owen Arthur and the party’s placement of the economy high on its platform.
Stuart’s real challenge is, however, yet in the distance. The economic rumblings, if they come, will not begin before April since the post-New Year, post-Thompson goodwill will not have faded and the full bite of the Budget will not have sunk in before then. Fortunately for Stuart, he will start the year with the by-election dress rehearsal, which will afford him the opportunity to cement his leadership in a well softened battlefield. It may either weaken him or strengthen him for the real test of his leadership. Whatever the outcome, he is expected to have a relatively quiet first quarter. After that comes the deluge.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus specialising in analysis of regional affairs.
