BARBADOS MAY be witnessing its own version of the Obama pre-election wobble. Having been declared as leading in the most recent polls, the weeks since the BLP’s annual convention have witnessed a crescendo of challenges to the party’s promised policies.
First it was the Barbados Economics Society, the Institute of Chartered Accountants and independent academics such as Professor Michael Howard of the UWI expressing opposition to the BLP’s promise to “put money back into people’s pockets”, on the basis that excessive largesse would hurt the Government’s revenue position. Particularly troubling to the BLP was the fact that these voices were sufficiently neutral and apolitical to escape the charge of party propaganda.
This opposition to the BLP’s money give-back policy was followed by an even more fierce round of public debate in response to the BLP’s announced policy of privatization of certain select sectors such as public transport and banking. In the BLP’s perspective, this emphasis on privatization is an inescapable necessity, given the country’s heavy debt burden. Thus, the privatization of public transport would put a stop to constant leakage in a loss-making sector, while the sale of existing shares in banking concerns would allow for huge, though one-off, injections of badly needed cash.
Opposition
Whilst on this occasion the criticisms which followed contained a heavier dose of party political propaganda, with the ruling DLP attributing to the BLP’s privatization programme what was never articulated by the BLP, the debate has spawned other developments more troubling to the BLP.
Particularly critical has been the trade union movement, which has expressed unmoving ideological opposition to privatization generally. Despite BLP attempts to clarify its position, the ideological opposition of the trade unionists to privatization has been sufficiently hardened to allow for a genuine exchange of views on the matter.
It is in response to this public resistance to its programmes that the BLP appears to have slipped.
In particular has been the response, by BLP Deputy Leader Dale Marshall, to the public rejection by National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) President Walter Maloney of “any form of privatization . . . that would cause dislocation of workers”. What was unfortunate in Marshall’s over-hasty accusation of Maloney as encouraging his membership to vote against the BLP was that Maloney had thrown his corn but called no fowl.
By pecking at Maloney’s corn Marshall appeared to be accepting guilt.
No party should enter an election at war with a constituency as large, and as politically significant as the trade union movement. Significantly, the quarrel with the NUPW and others over privatization has shifted the pre-election narrative away from the weak performance of the DLP. Instead, the BLP must use this moment to engage in a genuine policy debate.
Its handling of this debate will confirm the BLP’s slip as either a pre-election Obama wobble or a fatal wound.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs.
