Phew! What a week in politics.
For those who might not have been watching, the real general election campaign inconspicuously began with a 4:30 p.m. phone call Wednesday from the office of the Commissioner of Police to the office of the Leader of the Opposition.
And in case any remnant of the Barbados Labour Party’s (BLP) 30 general election candidates were lured into harbouring thoughts of an even more extended lead-up to the campaign than we have already had, they would have been rudely aroused from their state of hopeful slumber.
The suddenly enforced cancellation of the party’s advertised protest meeting Time Up Freundel in Heroes’ Square, Bridgetown, had all the hallmarks of a call to arms and a message to the naive that politics is not a Sunday school picnic.
We does play it rough ’bout hay!
I recall the clash of scheduled meetings in the Lower Green, Bridgetown, during the 1976 Bridgetown by-election when the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and the BLP sought to rally troops within earshot of each other, but after the last-minute refusal by the police of their preferred site, the BLP was forced to identify another location and sought refuge in Carlisle car park which then became their popular hunting ground.
The decision of the BLP to hold a meeting outside Parliament to signal that the Prime Minister’s time ended on the fifth anniversary of the last election on Tuesday, was strategically misplaced and mistimed. Prime Minister Freundel Stuart’s time in Parliament will expire on February 12, not this past week. It is his occupation of Government Headquarters which expired on January 16, for it was on that day his predecessor, David Thompson, moved into the actual corridors of power on Bay Street. The BLP rally, instead, should have been planned for The Esplanade, opposite the office of the Prime Minister and in his St Michael South constituency.
The Senate is not known, in my recollection over the past 25 years, to be so long delayed, even when debating contentious matters, to detain members until the 22nd hour of the night. Whatever the poker-face explanations offered, I believe it was a filibuster of large tongue-in-cheek proportions and with much salivation. What happened on Wednesday evening as senator after senator on Government’s side, in the absence of Opposition members, spoke at length on the rather innocuous Foundations Bill, indicated to the BLP and the voting public that the DLP’s election base was secured with steely resolve and reinforced concrete.
In my view, it was a ploy of which late Prime Minister J.M.G.M. “Tom” Adams would have been proud.
All good.
And for younger people not familiar with Adams’ cunning, let me say the DLP tactic also appeared to me to come from one of the early pages of the Hartley Henry political playbook.
All good.
It is said all is fair in love and war and there is certainly no love lost between the BLP and DLP in this election battle. Right now, the two parties are at political war. Each party and each leader is in many respects fighting to secure credibility, legacy and perhaps even survival.
In this political week of political war, and what I think was possibly the penultimate week of Government’s business in the life of Parliament, the cancellation of the meeting served to neutralize the strategic sting of the BLP’s boycott of Parliament. At the same time, it energized the BLP’s base, as was evidenced by the size and mood of the crowd at Friday’s rescheduled rally which saw both high and low performances by platform speakers.
The week evidenced the BLP’s execution of its controversial boycott of both the House of Assembly and the Senate to mixed reaction from public figures. While Dean Emeritus, Senator Harold Crichlow, was respected for his most strident criticism of the BLP action, I thought it hypocritical of some Dems such as MPs Denis Kellman and Donville Inniss to ridicule it. You cannot be in favour of the DLP’s successful pre-election boycott in 2007 which forced the hand of then Prime Minister Owen Arthur to call the election, but be against a similar move by the BLP in 2013. Kellman said that the BLP MPs who did not attend meetings should not be paid. But he failed to inform us if he had accepted his own pay when he failed to attend in 2007.
Boycotts and walkouts are part of political artillery. Let’s not get too sanctimonious about these things.
Just as controversial this past week was the DLP’s celebration (Kellman again) of its fifth anniversary of the 2008 election victory even as it goes down in history as the longest lingering party in Government in Barbados. Did he not recall the late Errol Barrow’s statement about not been caught lingering on the steps of Whitehall after closing hours?
Midweek, as the DLP remembered its fifth anniversary, political pundits gobbled up the well-timed public opinion poll conducted by CADRES on behalf of the online newspaper, Barbados Today. It signalled a stubborn seven per cent swing against the DLP. The DLP pushback in recent weeks would have contributed to a virtual arrest of the slide against it, but it has lots of work to do to reverse that slide. The poll also revealed a crystallization of the leadership stakes with both Mia Mottley (BLP) and Chris Sinckler (DLP), the heirs apparent, losing points to their leaders. I do not regard this as significant since with the elections on the horizons, party faithful will line up behind the chosen leader rather than express personal preferences. Hope and speculation give way to reality at these times.
Uncharacteristically, but wisely, the Prime Minister moved with dispatch and spent unusually long hours sorting out the dispute between LIME and the Barbados Workers’ Union. Three meetings at ministerial level were held in short order to give urgency to a resolution of a threatened national strike, not a matter that should grab headlines while the election clock ticks.
The last seven days also, most important, takes us to the brink of Errol Barrow Day tomorrow, politically significant this year if Stuart calls the election on that day. Barrow himself never spent more than the full 60 months of his tenure in office. His record in 1966 was 59 months; in 1971, it was 58 months and in 1976, troubled by two by-election losses, he pushed it to the 60-month limit. We cannot celebrate Barrow and ignore this timekeeping since to do so would be to ignore his legacy and practice.
Before the House is compulsorily dissolved on February 12, a factor no governing party which is behind in polls wants to have imposed on it, Stuart should announce elections tomorrow, giving him only 23 days to hold the poll prior to Ash Wednesday and the onset of Lent.
If Stuart goes past tomorrow, he will be taking the chance, unadvisedly, of being forced over the election cliff when circumstances over which he has no control, like layoffs or industrial unrest, influence the mood of the electorate.
As he chooses to make his way to Government House with advice for Governor General Sir Elliott Belgrave to dissolve Parliament, Stuart will be reminded of some poignant words in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress:
“Though with much difficulty I have got hither
Yet I do not repent me of the trouble I have taken.”
(Mr Valiant For Truth.)
Indeed, Mr Valiant For Truth, though battered and bruised, was so fully vindicated, he asked:
Oh, death, where is thy sting?
Oh grave, where is thy victory?
As the trumpets welcomed him to the other side, he proclaimed:
“My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder.”
But as I said to a restless BLP last week, I say to Stuart in different circumstances this week, wait.
In this case, the ultimate rewarder is the electorate, Sir.
• Harold Hoyte is Editor Emeritus of THE?NATION.
