The clichéd description of the coming election as “one of the most important elections” in the history of Barbados is on this occasion heavily pregnant with truth. Many of the debates that occupied the country from the period of the onslaught of the great recession of 2008, have their genesis in the dismantling of the global economic order, which has hitherto sustained the post-colonial development model pursued in the Caribbean.
In short, this is the first election in which the public, the parties, the business sector, and the trade unions come face to face with the realization, long been given voice by our thinkers, that the post-1945 independence project has collapsed and that something new, by necessity, must emerge from the ashes of the old. It is this stark reality that explains the unspoken tensions, anxieties, and uncertainties undergirding the election, as well as the contradictory and confusing policy prescriptions emanating from both platforms.
In the midst of this confusion and tension, the major desire of the electorate is for clarity and the elimination of uncertainty. Neither the promise of “hope” or the usual short-term satisfaction of immediate need can eclipse the deep requirement by the voter for a clear sense of “what is to be done” and what will be the concrete practical and policy basis upon which the development of the country will be established for the next ten to 25 years, and how his accustomed social and economic habits and expectations will be structured and sustained.
Normally, such crossroad and epoch-shifting moments throw up new ideas, new governing classes, new economies, new productive bases and new social relations. The confusion and uncertainty of this present election resides precisely in the fact that despite the objective necessity for radically new approaches, the current debate thus far revolves around old ideas and approaches.
Privatization versus nationalization, stimulus versus austerity, tourism and financial services versus agriculture and manufacturing, foreign versus local investment, state-led versus private sector employment have all been central to the post-colonial development debate from way back.
The coming election therefore provides the comical spectacle of two beautiful women arguing vigorously over the bed-ridden and dying body of an aged lover, whose impotence and loss of vigour have long been apparent to all observers. Whoever inherits the state post-February may well be assuming the responsibility for the interment of a dead order. Put differently, whoever assumes Government may well be inheriting a social crisis.
Out of this dismal prognosis, therefore, lies the rare and momentous opportunity for the political parties to chart relevant and creative manifesto programmes. Whoever presents a social and economic vision that charts a post-crisis development programme will, while not being assured of victory, have made a genuine contribution to the future development of the Caribbean region. The people are waiting.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs.
