By: Staff Writer
January 21, 2022
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has led her Barbados Labour Party (BLP) to a complete “red wash” in general elections, capturing all 30 seats in the House of Assembly for the second time in a row.
According to the news outlet, Barbados Today, PM Mottley repeats her 2018 results in stellar fashion, defeating the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), led by Verla De Peiza. De Peiza herself lost her individual race in the St. Lucy constituency.
Mottley made it seven out of eight victories in the St Michael North East constituency, easily defeating the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) candidate, Damien Griffith by a margin of 3216 to 476. Roy Turney of the BFP polled 48 votes.
Ms Mottley said at her swearing in ceremony yesterday that she is “humbled” by the show of support the people of Barbados has given her and that she will continue on with her policies with helping as many.
This snap election is the first election for the Caribbean island nation after becoming a republic in November 2021.
No doubt Barbadians are proud that Ms Mottley did something that the country was threatening to do for over 30 years in moving away from having Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and instead opting for its own Barbadian head of state.
Barbadian voters bought into the philosophy that they are “safer with Mia” wholesale and re-elected the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) into government with a consecutive clean sweep of the 30 seats in Parliament.
The calls by Ms Mottley against her opponent, Ms DePeiza and the Democratic Labour Party proved to have resonated with voters as Ms Mottley consistently called into question the true leadership of the DLP, often hinting that while Ms DePeiza is leading the DLP through the election it may not have necessarily been her who ends up as Prime Minister.
Preliminary results showed that the BLP had won all the seats in the election that Prime Minister Mia Mottley called 18 months ahead of the constitutional deadline and in the process allowed the party to become only the second political organisation in the Caribbean to sweep all the seats in an election on consecutive occasions.
The other time that has been achieved was in Grenada when Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell led his New National Party (NNP) in winning all 15 seats in 2018.
Taking the Opposition Democratic Labour Party by surprise, the snap election proved too much for them to mount any credible election campaign as Ms Mottley showed political guile, learning from the mistakes of other Caribbean leaders that held elections during this COVID-19 pandemic and decided to call it early rather than letting it linger on through her full term.