Reactions to the recent CADRES poll surpassed the findings. Worst of all have been attacks on the messenger, respected pollster Peter Wickham, studiously ignoring the import of the message.
Unless you have spent the last two years with your head deeply buried in the sand, ears stuffed with cotton wool and eyes shielded from the realities of life in this fair land, the results of the poll would have been entirely unsurprising.
Polls scientifically measure public opinion on particular subjects and CADRES, under the late Pat Emmanuel and now Wickham, has an acclaimed reputation across the region for its methodology and results.
So to allege, as one of the most regular callers to the talk shows did, that Wickham’s abrupt parting with the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation would have influenced the outcome of the poll, is a terrible travesty which hangs a tested professional’s integrity on the rack of petty political retribution.
Lest you forget, Wickham is not known to be a friend of either the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) or leader Owen Arthur. Indeed, he is on record as saying after the 2008 election that if he had to advise him, not that he would accept the advice, it would be to leave active politics.
A resurgent Arthur has stood his ground and leads in the recent poll with 29.8 per cent with Mia Mottley in close attendance at 25.5. Amazingly, the Prime Minister and Democratic Labour Party (DLP) leader Freundel Stuart trails Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler (19.9) with a meagre 9.9.
Only Stuart knows when he will ring the election bell and they say a week is a long time in politics. But, statistically, Cadres’ findings seem ominous. It beggars belief that any responsible politician, moreso the party leader, could say publicly that he did not read the poll which he cavalierly disdained as “irrelevant”.
Pollsters are not infallible and polls can be wrong. Remember the 2008 Boxhill poll? But they can shed light on the electorate’s thinking and indicate areas of strength and weakness which can help workers in the party’s engine room concentrate their planning and energies.
To ignore professionally gathered information, no matter how distasteful, which can be germane to the party’s planning and success, is difficult to fathom. But the leader’s admitted refusal to familiarize himself with the poll is not unlike his admitted failure to read the CLICO forensic report immediately after submission.
Some of his ministers read the poll. Minister of Housing Michael Lashley told St James North constituents at a meeting that they should not be flustered and lose any sleep. He also told them that unlike the BLP, the DLP was unified.
Outburst
Minister of Agriculture Dr David Estwick described the poll as “rubbish”, saying “polls don’t vote”. But within days he showed exactly how unified the Government was in an extraordinary robust outburst at an international conference at Savannah Hotel, where he threatened to resign if his ministry’s programme did not garner colleagues’ support.
Setting out the recurrent shortcomings, he appealed for the “requisite capital” to build a “modern agricultural infrastructure” to cushion international shocks and food security. Utilizing the dialect, he warned: “It is either that we decide to do this or all of us gine through the eddoes.”
He pointed acidly to the fact that his ministry had been allocated a paltry 1.5 per cent of the national budget, unlike some other countries which understood the importance of the agricultural sector and allocated six or seven per cent. It was a major public clothes washing, a significant departure from the principle of collective responsibility.
The country will anxiously await the Cabinet’s reaction and whether Dr Estwick carries out his threat to walk. Coming after the Eager Eleven’s public charge of “drift and inertia” and the Prime Minister’s unrealized response that “heads would roll”, it is clear that Minister Lashley’s assertion of a unified party and Government appears to be so much pie in the sky.
Even in their reaction to the poll, there were glaring divisions. Unlike Stuart, Estwick and Lashley, Minister of Transport and Works John Boyce, Hamilton Lashley and James Paul were more realistic, saying it was a wake-up call and telling supporters to take the information and work with it, and to take nothing for granted. Lashley best captured popular opinion when he said: “You do not take a poll lightly . . . any poll must be taken seriously.”
The poll was deeply encouraging for the Opposition. Deputy Leader Dale Marshall told the Press that the poll “mirrors the sentiments being expressed on the ground” and the Opposition “is in sync with the mood and feel of the people of Barbados”. He rightly cautioned against any sense of triumphalism.
Both parties would have noted Prime Minister Stuart’s promise last Sunday that the BLP would not have to wait much longer for elections. Will he be similarly disposed after studying the poll?
• Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat. Email [email protected]
