With the next general election constitutionally due in 2023, former parliamentarian Hamilton Lashley is calling on the members of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) to ask themselves who is the most suitable person to lead the party into the polls.
He told Barbados TODAY that he has been keeping a close eye on the upcoming race between incumbent party president Verla DePeiza and her challenger Reverend Guy Hewitt, with elections slated to be held during the party’s August 18-22 annual conference.
Lashley said it is critical, at this time, for the DLP membership to determine if they see their party as an alternative government. If they do, he said, they must question if the current leader is the right person to take the party into the next general election or if someone else should be given the job.
“Running a country like Barbados, with COVID-19 and post-COVID, will need a leader that is a visionary, that has the imagination, capabilities and skills of a leader,” Lashley said.
“We can’t believe leadership to be an emotional exercise. Verla will, obviously, within the realms of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) corridors, get that ‘cuh dear’ vote – ‘cuh dear, she was leader and she took the party through the rough seas phase’. And that is a good thing, but the real question is, having done all of that, is Verla the right person to lead Barbados?”
Lashley said the fact that a number of members resigned from the DLP executive DePeiza has led for the past three years should assist members in determining whether the attorney-at-law is the right person to be at the helm of the party.
“Could Verla DePeiza replace Mia Amor Mottley? I don’t know, but at the present moment, as I see it, that might be a mission impossible.
“So, how I am seeing it right now is it can’t be the little emotional ‘cuh dear, you got to give she a break’. It cannot be like that. You got a country with nearly 300 000 people residing here, we got to take leadership seriously in this country,” Lashley said.
The veteran politician said DLP members also had to determine whether Hewitt is capable of leading either the party or the country.
Lashley noted that he was impressed with the fact that Hewitt, while serving as High Commissioner for Barbados to London, played a pivotal role in coercing the British government to react with urgency to the worsening Windrush scandal.
He said: “He is the person out of everybody else in the Caribbean that is mostly credited for the British Government changing the policy to give a kind of emancipation to our people and give them their rights. He is the person who went up there and rectified that.
“So, to say that he has not got leadership qualities is wrong. People have to remember that a professional diplomat cannot get involved [in the politics of a country]. Although he was appointed by the Democratic Labour Party, he was a diplomat and the two cannot mix.”
