IT TOOK a full count, a partial recount and then a full recount in a marathon 10 hours before Santia Bradshaw could finally walk in her father’s footsteps.
To cheers and whistles from supporters and with her beaming parents at her side the attorney-at-law and businesswoman was declared the winner of the St. Michael South-East seat at 5:20 a.m. on Friday morning by a weary returning officer Hallam Archer who had presided over a full day of voting and then a grueling night of ballot counting and recounting.
In the end, 10 votes, one more than she originally got in the initial count, was all that separated Bradshaw from her keen rival and fellow newcomer Patrick Tannis of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP). She scored 2 402 and he 2 392 with 23 ballots.
“I feel great. It is a very emotional night for me,” a tired but smiling Bradshaw said moments before she was swept onto the shoulders of red-shirt glad supporters and carried from the Parkinson School hall.
“Even though it was a close call in terms of the race, I thank the father that I am able to serve the people at this level,” she said. “I have prayed for this moment. I have mixed emotions,” she added.
She said while her win was a “big victory for me, I am saddened as well that the DLP is still in office. I am saddened because I think tomorrow while we may celebrate, I feel as though people are still going to be struggling and there is not the hope for tomorrow that I felt the Barbados Labour Party would have been able to bring”.
She said now that her party’s numbers were stronger in Parliament in Opposition, they were “going to be able to demonstrate to the people of this country that we were the better Government for them”.
Her father, Delisle Bradshaw, who also served as her campaign manager held that seat from 1976 – 1986 and then again from 1991 – 1994 in BLP administrations was lost for words to describe his joy at her win. “I have a feeling that … a dad feels when a daughter has followed in his footsteps.
“History has been created tonight,” he said noting that since independence his daughter was the only person to be elected to Parliament in which her father also sat.
Mia Mottley, who was Opposition Leader when Bradshaw was first nominated to contest the seat said Bradshaw had a “sincerity and warmth that is not rooted in the more cynical aspects of politics and I feel that she was rewarded for that sincerity warmth.”
Mottley said Bradshaw “distinguished herself by believing in a form of representation and interaction with the people that was real and that is what paid dividends tonight”.
Despite receiving the political mantle from Hamilton Lashley, the man who dominated the political and cultural landscape of the community for over three decades, Tannis, who could not muster enough support to ease past Bradshaw, left the counting center quietly without speaking to the media.
Hours earlier he had arrived for the recount saying only he was “confident” he had won. (AGB)
