Solutions Barbados and two other parties broker deal to team up

Solutions Barbados and two other budding political organisations have been privately making headway on a plan to join forces in an attempt to capture at least 22 seats in Parliament.

And in an unprecedented move, Solutions president Grenville Phillips II has pledged to support candidates from other political parties particularly in constituencies where representation from his coalition is absent.

On Friday, Phillips paid deposits on behalf of 10 Solutions candidates who he expects will run in the constituencies they canvassed during the 2018 General Election.

However, the well-known engineer would neither disclose the names of his candidates nor the other parties involved.

“I am still not running but I came to ensure that we have 10 candidates that are going to run, because once you have a minimum of 10, then you are recognized and allowed on CBC,” Philips told reporters at the National Housing Corporation’s headquarters.

“We are going to have a coalition of three parties, we expect to have over 20 candidates, we are hoping there are going to be 30, but if they are not, we know we will definitely have about 22 candidates and then we will endorse eight who agree with our policies and know the Lord,” he further disclosed.

Phillips promised to hold a press conference to more formally present the coalition.

When pressed about his promise to endorse eight other candidates, he explained that they would come from among his political opponents.

“We also have to select out of the others in the UPP, the BLP, Atherley’s party, those who we can endorse. There will probably be about eight, so we will have to select those…Every Barbadian needs to have a choice in this election,” he stressed.

Later in the day, General Secretary of the Barbados Sovereignty Party, Michael Thompson said his party would join the coalition.

Meanwhile, the newly formed Alliance Party for Progress, which is a merger of the People’s Party for Democracy and Development and the United Progressive Party, turned out to pay their deposits clad in their party colours of green and orange respectively.

However, the leaders, Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley and Lynette Eastmond said they were uncertain how many candidates were on the slate.

Eastmond promised to provide a more comprehensive update at a later date. (KS)