As one approaches the issue of election timing, it is perhaps necessary to first re-state the obvious largely because our Prime Minister has generally responded to commentaries such as this by reminding us that it is he and he alone who can determine the date for the election.
Certainly, there are few people who are not aware of this fact. However, most of us are also aware that the ability to call an election “any time” is perhaps the incumbent’s most potent strategic tool. We also appreciate that as we move towards the five-year or 60-month (psychological) deadline, the Prime Minister actually loses his power in this regard since there is no element of surprise.
It is also important to note that the period identified above is actually more of a psychological marker since the Constitution stipulates that Parliament should be dissolved five years after the first sitting of Parliament and not five years after the previous election.
Generally, the first sitting is held within the first month of the new Government’s life, which does not add considerable time to the Government’s life, but this technicality needs to be appreciated nonetheless.
The constitutional stipulation in simple language gives the Prime Minister the option to dissolve Parliament any time within that five-year period. If he does not exercise that option, then the Parliament is automatically dissolved on the five-year anniversary and thereafter he has 90 days within which to identify a date for nominations and elections. Depending on how quickly an administration is able to summon Parliament, these constitutional stipulations could theoretically give an administration 65 months “in office” especially since the Cabinet is constituted within days of the election.
The appended table presents data that is of interest to those pondering the issue of election timing. It uses months and not days since these are slightly easier to compute. In this instance, a month is defined as more than ten days after the first since this would amount to more than one third of a month. The analysis also presents average terms for both the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and these computations exclude the pre-Independence 1961-1966 election and the DLP’s 1991-1994 term which was truncated because the Government collapsed.
At first glance, it is clear that while Prime Ministers have the power to call elections anytime within the five-year term, they seldom do since elections have generally been held within two or four months of the 60-month limit. In Barbados, there has only been one election called “early” – in 1994, 17 months early on account of the vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. It is also clear that no Prime Minister has considered it prudent to utilize his 90-day discretionary period, and moreover, all of them seemed to have perceived the 60-month anniversary of the previous election as their outermost limit.
The DLP appears to have been inclined towards longer terms in the post-Independence period since it has continued its administrations for 58 months on average, while the BLP has called elections after 56 months. It is also interesting to note that in both instances, the longer terms were the ones that the Government ultimately lost and no election called in the 60th month has been won by the incumbent.
This type of outcome suggests that incumbent Governments seem to have a sense that a defeat is imminent and therefore either prolong their term to gain maximum benefit, or in the hope that an unlikely political opportunity would present itself in the final weeks.
Against this background, a brief comment on the contemporary scenario is possible and the first observation is that at the end of 2012, the DLP Government will be 59 months old. This is one month older than the DLP average, one month younger than the ill-fated 1976 DLP Government and among the oldest administrations since Independence.
The analysis presumes that Prime Minister Freundel Stuart will not call the election this year for two reasons: the first being the lack of strategic logic in an election during December; and the second and more important is my conviction that the Prime Minister will call the election when he “has to” and not before.
Technically, he does not have to act until February 12, 2013 when Parliament will automatically dissolve itself. Hence, there is nothing to stop him from dissolving Parliament on February 11 and exercising his option not to identify an actual election date since he has 90 days within which to do this. Certainly, this would be unwise, but would equally be entirely legal and it would give the Prime Minister the opportunity to display his superior knowledge of our laws and Constitution, while frustrating the Opposition and political commentators.
The alternative thinking would be framed around the assumption that the Prime Minister perceives the 60th month of his administration as the point at which he “is forced” to act and therefore dissolves Parliament around January 14 or 15, 2013. This announcement would of course be made while reminding “us” of his entitlement to continue for a full additional month and as such the election is actually “early”.
The announcement of the election date can either be made immediately on the announcement of the dissolution or at a later point, but either way this mid-January dissolution would allow for the election to be held and Parliament to be reconvened in time for the passage of the 2013 Estimates of Expenditure (March 31).
Regardless of which of these options the Prime Minster pursues, his administration will still distinguish itself as one of the longest “sitting” and history suggests that this distinction carries ominous consequences.
• Peter W. Wickham is a political consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES).
