The people of the Turks and Caicos Islands have spoken. Soo too have the people of Grenada, The Bahamas and Barbados. They have all come back with their last elections with blowouts with The Bahamas being the earliest one and scheduled to have another election next year.
With all except Grenada, the governing party was sent packing. Unceremoniously cruel in its message. Trinidad and Tobago and St Vincent and the Grenadines also had elections, where in the latter prime minister Ralph Gonsalves held on to win his fifth consecutive election and gaining one extra seat in the 15 seat parliament, with nine; in the former, it appears as if the people in T&T just want nothing more to do with their former prime minister and first female prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar. However, T&T’s governing People’s National Movement led by Dr Keith Rowley won but by a smaller margin than the previous election and also lost one seat, now holding only 22 of the 41 seat parliament.
What does this mean for Caribbean democracy? Not good if you ask me, because these blowouts lead to dictators and abuses of power concentrated in one party. I don’t care how the try to make Barbadian prime minister Mia Mottley out to be the beacon of hope in Caribbean civility and democratic discourse, she is a human being like we all are. Prone to the same faults and traps and desires.
We need a better system than this parliamentary democracy in order to stop these wild swings in government. Not only do they breed dictators, but they also disrupt progress in the country as more often than not the new government stops all programmes left in place by their predeccesors and so on.
We need better than this. But for now, at least Caribbean folks are exercising their right to vote. Not too long ago many of us coloured folks didn’t have that right, so use it to your best ability until we either mature as a region or work out some other model for our respective countries based on our historical and cultural makeup.