SHORTLY after the passing of David Thompson, his successor, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, ominously warned opponents along with the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) during that period of national mourning, and the temporary shelving of partisan approaches, that the time would come for the “hard politics”.
Having secured re-election for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in the 2013 general election – albeit with a pencil-thin majority – Stuart found himself constrained to walk carefully through the minefield of a disunited Cabinet and a Government-in-waiting, pressing with what seemed indecent haste to resume office that bordered dangerously on a sense of entitlement.
But perhaps the greatest challenge to the Stuart Administration was the prolonged recession which affected the economy, and this was compounded by the difficulties experienced by a first-time Minister of Finance in search of economic recovery and the still elusive Holy Grail of growth, while it seemed as if all of our regional neighbours were shouting their success from the rooftops.
However, Government is pinning the economic recovery hopes on the backs of some major infrastructural and tourism-related projects – slated to start later this year or in 2016 – whose promise appears to have injected a little confidence into the domestic corporate sector as international investors prepare to pitch their tents.
It is against such a background, and not beyond the bounds of probability, that Stuart, despite the fragility of his hold on a fractious Cabinet and the uncertainty of his votes in the House, may want to use this platform to assert himself and give not only his temperamental colleagues but also an impatient Opposition a taste of his version of the “hard politics”.
There seems to be a consensus that with there being some faint light at the end of this long, dark economic tunnel, the focus of the national conversation will ineluctably shift from the fiscal and economic to the purely political in 2015.
Economist Dr Clyde Mascoll, in his January 1 What Matters Most column, put it this way: “The year 2015 is going to be more challenging from a political perspective than an economic one, simply because genuine economic recovery will take about five or more years, while the perception of recovery will start or more appropriately will continue.”
All Ah We Is One columnist Dr Tennyson Joseph, on December 30, wrote: “If 2014 was the year when the economic crisis and the local adjustment to it was to play itself out, then 2015 is expected to be the year when the political impacts of the economic adjustments are likely to manifest themselves.”
No Budget
Some people have suggested that the first inkling of the Stuart Administration’s new “hard politics” approach came with the determination that after months of promising Barbadians a belated Budget in December 2014 there would only instead be a Ministerial Statement.
One immediate and telling effect of using such a parliamentary device is that while it would allow the minister to deliver a “Budget” of sorts, it would not afford the Opposition the chance to discuss the document in Parliament since those statements are not debated.
Parenthetically, it should be noted that while our traditional “Budget” is in fact a package of a financial statement and the budgetary proposals, it can only be debated if Government attaches a “take note” motion to the Ministerial Statement.
While theoretically it might have been possible for an eager Opposition to move its own “take note” motion to the December 16 Ministerial Statement, it is highly unlikely that it would have been accommodated by the Government.
There was no way the ruling party would provide an opportunistic Opposition with a platform to rip apart its policies and programmes and preach the gospel of doom and gloom, along with the prospects of a bleak future so close to the Christmas holiday season. Absolutely none!
But it was the calculated action of a brazen Government, apparently emboldened by a floundering Opposition and a populace beaten into submission by seemingly never-ending increases in taxation and rising joblessness, that offered little hope to many.
It was the second successive year that the Stuart Administration had gambled on a Ministerial Statement in December, as if to test the patience and endurance of long-suffering Barbadians. The previous year, they were stunned by the revelation that 3 000 public workers would be axed and that other cuts in Government spending would ensue into 2014.
Barbadians can only hope that the “hard politics” will extend to the Cabinet itself with the rumoured reshuffle to end the strained relations among and between ministers.
• Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent. Email [email protected].
