#BTYearInReview2019 – Newsmaker – Mia Amor Mottley

During 2019, she was ever present, heard and seen in many public spaces at home and abroad.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley made news almost every week, sometimes several times a week, having something to tell the nation, the region or the world.

Ever since leading the Barbados Labour Party to a clean-sweep at the May 24, 2018 polls, Mottley has created the fear that she may be heading for burnout with some in the private sector suggesting she might be doing a bit too much for one individual.

They have observed that Mottley has been seizing the proverbial bull by the horn and taking the lead on some major issues normally assigned to other Cabinet Ministers.

The most glaring example in 2019 was the two-day island-wide power outage and subsequent water supply disruption beginning on Monday, 18 November which Managing Director of the Barbados Light and Power Company Roger Blackman later blamed on contaminated fuel compounded by aging generator equipment, half of which is past its “retirement age.”

That power blackout left 130,000 customers without electricity for most of the first day and led to the early closure of schools and several businesses by midday.

The next day, another outage turned to outrage as the Prime Minister addressed the nation describing the blackout as “unacceptable and embarrassing” and expressed dismay at how the country could have lost “all of its generating capacity” at once.

Within hours the Prime Minister was meeting with the chairman of BL&P’s Canada-based parent Emera to get to the bottom of the power problem and to find short and long-term solutions.

On Tuesday night, after a second day of the outage, Mottley addressed the country again during a news conference and announced that an agreement had been reached for the installation of additional generating capacity.

Flanked by Minister for Energy Wilfred Abrahams, the Prime Minister also said she had told the BL&P officials their original procurement schedule for new generating capacity of 12 to 18 months was unacceptable.

Within days, the Light and Power had ordered up to $4 million in extra power-making capacity in a bid to limit future islandwide blackouts.

In September, she also intervened in the issue of the non-payment of invalidity pensions for former public servants.

Mottley announced that her Government would resume paying invalidity pensions to more than 150 people, even as it continues to deal with the “overpayment anomaly” that has cost the Treasury BDS$13.8 million, over the past ten years.

With independence celebrations in the air, the Prime Minister was out and about among the future leaders of this nation

She was visiting the Blackman and Gollop Primary School at Staple Grove, Christ Church to start the New National Consciousness Conversations where she will be visiting primary and secondary schools to dialogue with children.

After the tour, she said: “It is important for me to interact with young people of all ages in this country. I want to be with the children to hear firsthand what they are feeling and experiencing.  We are going to start the secondary schools soon and that is going to be at a different level of communication; we want to hear from them. We can only build this country if we listen to and talk with each other and not at each other.”

The Prime Minister was also “lighting fires” on the global front as she took on the causes of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – like Barbados – in their battle to mitigate against the ravages of climate change.

In a no-holds-barred speech at the UN Climate Action Summit at UN Headquarters in New York in September, Mottley “raised the room temperature” when she told the international financial institutions and the More Developed Nations that the existing rules by which they measure grants and concessional loans were irrelevant.

She was adamant that to use a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the litmus test would rule out the most vulnerable states to natural disasters from benefiting.

The Prime Minister continued to blaze the trail on climate change mitigation on behalf of small states when she delivered the prestigious 16th Raúl Prebisch Lecture at the United Nations’ European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 10.

During that lecture to honour Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch, UNCTAD’s founding Secretary-General, Mottley challenged the world to reinvent the international order and do better by small island states that are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, fighting for their survival in a war they did not start.

Towards the end of that month, she was back on the world stage again speaking once more in blunt terms to a global audience on behalf of small island developing states.  On this occasion, Mottley was addressing the General Debate of the 74th Session of the UN.

And while she expressed optimism that mankind will find a solution someday to halt and reverse climate change, she questioned whether it would not be too late for countries such as Barbados to survive “this catastrophe”.

She made the news again in June, when she held a press conference at Grantley Adams International Airport after returning from overseas.

Mottley was just back from holding talks with the Director General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to prepare the way for a major global meeting in Barbados.

At that press conference, Mottley also took the opportunity to express regret at the disappearance of a visiting American couple who went missing on a jet ski and to assure the relatives that the Government would do everything possible to find them.

They still remain unaccounted for.

On December 12, she was in a motorcade in Kenya after attending Jamhuri, or Republic Day, celebrations there. This after delivering another stirring speech to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc and opening a CARICOM office n Nairobi.

She intensified her personal bond with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, laid a wreath at the monument to his father and founder of the nation, Jomo Kenyatta, and signed a dizzying raft of bilateral agreements.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley with President Uhuru Kenyatta.

There seemed to be no end to her global travels as she was in New York City this time in mid-September.  There, she was  honoured by Barbadian super star and fashion icon Rihanna at the 2019 Diamond Ball.  The ball is the biggest fundraising event for Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation. This year part proceeds are being used to aid the survivors of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas.

Rihanna told reporters she considers Mottley to be a “role model in her life”. She praised Barbados’ first female Prime Minister for being fearless and passionate.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley poses with Rihanna during the 2019 Diamond Ball.

When Hurricane Dorian slammed into northern Bahamas about five months ago, Mottley was at the forefront of assuring the government and people of the 700-island archipelago of this island’s support.

At the same time, she was telling Barbadians to be on the alert and be ready for the passage of what was at that stage, a tropical storm.

Also in early November, the Prime Minister appeared to reach a new peak of frustration with the pace of Caribbean integration, declaring it has crawled to the point where her fellow CARICOM leaders are gripped by a “crisis of will” and that she is growing tired of giving speeches pointing the way forward for the 46-year-old bloc.

“I almost tire now of giving these speeches… and I tire of giving them because progress is too slow, and I ask myself why is progress slow… and it comes right back down to where I started. Fundamentally, it is about the will to make that difference,” she told the ninth annual Caribbean Forum on Regional Transformation for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

The Barbados Prime Minister was back in the spotlight again in November when she paid an official visit to the new Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva at the Fund’s headquarters in Washington.

The two discussed development and economic plans for this country and progress on the reform strategy that is part of the IMF’s programme with Barbados.

During the year, the Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo was a special guest of Mottley, during which they held bilateral discussions on various issues of mutual interest.

Several months later, she made a reciprocal trip to the West African nation and was accompanied by a local delegation that included business leaders who meet their Ghanaian counterparts.

It has now become a habit for the Prime Minister to have post-Cabinet press conferences to update the nation on current issues affecting the country and the escalating crime situation was part of that agenda.

If one were to list all of the events involving Prime Minister Mia Mottley during the past year, it would certainly consume several pages of this publication.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb