January 18, 2022
Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley called a snap election and took the Opposition by surprise. The Opposition was caught totally off-guard, you can tell by the way they scrambled to assemble candidates and trying to articulate a coherent counter to Ms Mottley.
Will Ms Mottley’s trick be enough to get her a second term remains to be seen. Without a doubt there is dissatisfaction in the air in Barbados, some of it we have covered and from quarters we expected to be in Ms Mottley’s corner. The gripe is she just has not done enough with regard to domestic reform, left too many things undone.
In fact, this is part of her excuse of sorts is that the reason why she has not completed all of what she wanted to do is because COVID-19 had her preoccupied and could not focus on what she had promised. We would venture to say that her agenda from 2018 was undoable in the first instance, but that would be splitting hairs for no reason because people don’t want to discuss the finer points of a platform they probably only glanced over.
Her opponent, President of the Democratic Labour Party, Ms Verla DePeiza seems to be a nice enough woman. She has spoken to Caribbean Magazine Plus on two occasions prior and we find her genuine, but what can she offer to Ms Mottley who has taken the country to republic status while Ms DePeiza was busy picking up the pieces from a decimated DLP still smarting from their landslide loss in 2018.
Ms Mottley even has taken the liberty to indulge in some political mischief, claiming that Ms DePeiza does not control her party- a pretty old political trick, sort of a sign of desperation by Ms Mottley to have to go to that at a time when she supposedly is supposed to have so much political capital.
Trying to instil fear in the electorate about your opponent’s leadership only works at the margins and is not a strategy for a convincing win. I think another landslide is out of the question for Ms Mottley, people know what it looks like to live in a country without a credible opposition- it ain’ pretty. They want balance.
We are rooting for a good outcome for the Barbadian people. Happy to see the elections are relatively peaceful.