POLITICAL?SCIENTISTS?Dr George Belle and Peter Wickham yesterday weighed in on the announcement by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart that the general election will be on February 21.
Dr Belle maintained that the election was “unnecessarily delayed”.
“We knew that the Constitution and the law allowed him to call it after the five years had passed since the last election but it was the practice in Barbados and most of the Commonwealth that you would call the elections before the anniversary of the last election date.
“I would have thought it would be better to call it before the five years was up . . . but the Constitution is quite clear and specific that it is from when the legislature sits; so he has called it before the 12th of February, which is the five years that the legislature sat first after the last election. So in that sense he is within the law but he is outside of custom.”
