Backbench MP delivers stinging rebuke of BLP

In a rare break from the party line, a senior backbench MP on Tuesday accused the Barbados Labour Party and the Mottley administration of an apparently hypocritical “condonation of corruption” for which it had previously blasted its predecessors in Government.

St Andrew MP George Payne lambasted Government’s anti-corruption record while lawmakers moved to complete the reform of a 101-year-old Prevention of Corruption Act that began but was never completed under the Freundel Stuart administration, then continued by the Mottley administration before it was defeated in the Senate last year.

Payne said the administration and his party have openly dropped the ball on fighting the corruption and mismanagement they had accused the 2008-2018 Democratic Labour Party administration of committing.

Referring to the appointment of former DLP Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler to the Jobs and Investment Council back in April 2020, Payne questioned the rationale behind hiring the DLP member to such an important financial committee. If the accusations made against him were false, he said, an apology to Sinckler and the Barbadians public should be forthcoming.

Payne told the House of Assembly: “For the life of me I was a little flabbergasted when you could come two years after having attacked the Minister of Finance, having attacked the policies of the Democratic Labour Party, having attacked the mismanagement of the Democratic Labour Party, when you could come and make that same Minister of Finance an advisor in the Barbados Labour Party as part of an investments council within the Barbados Labour Party.

“That speaks of a condonation of the same policies you attacked during the election campaign…If in our opinion, that Minister of Finance was wrongly accused, and wrongly alleged to be part of the mismanagement and alleged corruption in the last administration, and we now realize that we were wrong, before we did anything to rehabilitate that individual, we should make an apology to the people of Barbados in the same way that we went on the political platforms and made those accusations.”

Payne then took his party’s leader, Prime Minister Mia Mottley, to task for what he described as a contradictory stance on those who owned large construction companies on the island.

In a thinly veiled reference to cement magnate Mark Maloney, the backbencher said that given the rebuke Mottley laid on the DLP for handing out larger and more lucrative contracts to seemingly one individual for projects at Coverley and other areas, the country deserved an explanation on big deals that were still being given to the contractor.

Payne told the House: “I listened to the leader of my political party on political platforms itemizing all the things that were given to this particular individual, can’t happen here that is what was said. and you in bed with a person like that?

“Condonation of corruption is not covered in this bill, but condonation of corruption is the same thing as corruption.”

Payne also insisted that though he fully supported the Prevention of Corruption Bill currently before lawmakers, it lacked the teeth and grit necessary to make a real dent in what he saw as a problem that continues to erode public trust.

Though the non-partisan Bar Association and the Integrity Group Barbados made suggestions to the 2018 Integrity in Public Life Bill and once again made several contributions to the new anti-corruption bill, Payne questioned why these suggestions, including campaign finance laws, had not made it to the floor.

“You solicit comments from [Integrity Group Barbados], from the Bar Association, but yet when you come to the legislation you totally ignore [them], apart from a few pleasantries,” said Payne.

“You are dealing with 75 pages you know in this Corruption Bill, and then you are dealing with 15 pages of solid recommendations, plus recommendations from the Bar Association, nothing of substance in terms of those recommendations.” (SB)