Prime Minister Freundel Stuart says Patrick Todd’s journey in life is similar to his, and that makes him the ideal representative for St Michael North East rather than Mia Mottley.
Stuart was speaking in support of Todd, who is pitted against long-time incumbent Mottley, the Barbados Labour Party leader, during a Democratic Labour Party (DLP) meeting at Lawrence T. Gay Memorial School on Sunday night.
“Todd was born of humble parents, attended Erdiston Primary School, The Lodge School, Harrison College and the Cave Hill Campus. He worked for many years as a teacher of mathematics in schools across Barbados. His journey is your journey. That’s the journey you know. His journey is my journey. That is the journey we know.
“Each of us in this room can look inward, having heard my narration of my journey, and can identify with it because it is our journey as well. Born of humble parents, got a primary education as a result of the policies of the DLP, getting a secondary education. And those of us who were interested got a tertiary education, and beyond that committed ourselves to an ethic of hard work and sacrifice to make life. That is his journey and that is your journey,” Stuart added.
The Prime Minister stressed it was the birth of the DLP in 1955 which ensured that people of humble birth could realise their dreams through hard work and sacrifice.
“I would have wished it no other way. I love hard work, I love sacrifice. Sacrifice builds strength of character. I do not have any sense of entitlement.”
Stuart said the question must be asked if voters in the constituency were justified in supporting Mottley whose journey in life, he posited, was different.
“That is where this sense of entitlement has come from. Todd has no sense of entitlement; he would be impertinent to have one. His parents could not send him to England when there is a law faculty here. But to go there would have involved being on the same level as all the other people around her now . . . . Todd could not do that,” he argued. (NC)
