Thompson says no evidence PM is a woman to be afraid of

What should we fear?

This was the question posed by veteran Barbados Labour Party (BLP) politician Elizabeth Thompson on Sunday, in response to claims from former Government Senator Lucille Moe that she had grown afraid of Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

Moe, who served as Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Public Affairs up until July 2020 when she was abruptly sacked as part of a Cabinet reshuffle, said power had changed Mottley and she had become “autocratic”.

However, speaking at a BLP spot meeting in Eagle Hall, Thompson dismissed the accusations of Moe, who is now serving as a campaign strategist for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), saying there was nothing about the country’s leader to fear.

“The Bible says ‘by their deeds you shall know them’. Let’s look at Mottley – she and some of her team years ago had a falling out, they changed leaders, Mottley came back and put those very same people into her Cabinet. They were part of her team and they stand loyally behind her tonight,” the former minister asserted.

“Nobody abused or treated Mia Mottley worse than [the late former Prime Minister] Owen Arthur. There was nothing he did not say about – or there was nothing good he said about her – when he was ready. She came back as Prime Minister and treated him with the utmost graciousness, the greatest magnanimity, the most generosity, and then delivered the eulogy at his funeral. You can’t ask for more than that.”

Thompson questioned the lack of evidence submitted by Moe to support her allegation, saying there was no evidence that the Prime Minister had wielded her power in an unfair manner.

“Where is the cruelty, where is the despotism? So when we are told that you have to be afraid of this woman… afraid of what? We have seen how she has treated those who have wielded blows against her, those who have wounded her, so we know she is not a vindictive or a cruel woman; we have seen it. We know she has put service above self because we have seen it.”

Thompson, who reminded supporters that she was fired from Arthur’s Cabinet in 1999 when she was Minister of Health, pointed out that all Prime Ministers have the right to promote or demote any representative under their charge in Parliament.

“A Prime Minister has a right to choose who he or she wants in his or her Cabinet. It is not an entitlement, and your ego must not get so big that you put self before service. You must accept that when the Prime Minister calls you and says come, you come in silence and you smile, and when the Prime Minister tells you go, you bloody well pack up and go in silence and you smile, and you say to the nation what I said to Owen Arthur… ‘thank you, Prime Minister, for the opportunity to serve’.

“You don’t go nowhere and buse the Prime Minister, you don’t go nowhere and buse the party leader, you don’t… draw [a salary] and refuse to go into the Parliament and talk on behalf of the people of the country. I want the people who are doing that, if there is anybody who has behaved that way, to reflect on if this is appropriate or not,” Thompson contended, referring to Moe’s eight-month absence from the Senate last year.

Moe had told Barbados TODAY over the weekend that she had no choice but to disassociate herself from her friend of more than 50 years because power had changed her.

“Mia has changed, she’s got real power because the power of the prime minister is great under the Parliamentary democracies we have in these Caribbean islands. And regrettably Mia has changed; she is not handling the power like you thought she would have.

“I mean I was so excited three and a half years ago when she won, but she has become, to such a point, dictatorial in her style of politics. She is autocratic and she does not allow anyone to have any kind of view or opinion; everybody must be in the Mia Mottley choir. Or it is problem for you. And it got to the point I could not take it anymore,” Moe charged. (SB)