Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by Leslie Lett Jr
Another massive 30-00 electoral victory! And more history has been created. Once more, resounding success at the polls for the Barbados Labour Party. It is a truly remarkable feat – back-to-back “red-washes”! And congratulations must go to our Prime Minister Mia Mottley and her colleagues.
What has been accomplished must be appropriately contextualised, carefully understood, and properly appreciated by us all. The analyses will be many and varied. It will be interesting to interrogate the voter turnout.
But whatever the nature and content of the commentary, there can be no doubt that the magnitude of this BLP electoral triumph is momentous! Very best wishes to the new administration as it assumes office. Very best wishes to our new republic as we move on from this day.
Our only other mass-based party, the Democratic Labour Party, must now surely, surely, surely, be forced to do what has been long, long, long overdue, and, without which, it runs the very real and tragically unfortunate possibility of being consigned to being a political nonentity – perceived, and rejected as disconnected, blind, deaf, uninspiring, and irrelevant.
Profligately continuing to squander an undeniably great legacy. The necessary reality-check the DLP has adamantly failed to take has come to slap it hard in its face. What should it learn? How long will it take to assimilate the lesson(s)?
Beasts must be confronted if their rampage is to be arrested! Just for starters, I do believe that this organisation will have to come to the clear understanding that what was wrought upon this nation under the Freundel Stuart administration will not – and definitely should not – readily be forgotten, and that until, as a political party, it meaningfully and unequivocally disavows these claims of the alleged “gloriousness” of that period, and radically breaks with those characters who are very well-remembered to have played a significant role in the manufacture of the very real afflictions of those times, it will keep suffering such rejection at the polls.
I do sincerely hope that none of the DLP officials will go about, as has been committed by some in the recent past, castigating, quarreling with, and insulting the electorate for being “less-than-astute” for again returning a 30-0 result. That was a most offensive feature in the aftermath of the previous red-wash. Please desist from such folly!
To me, as a citizen of our new republic, it is a source of profound and grave disconcertment that there was allowed to be perpetrated upon the electorate of Barbados such a disenfranchisement as obtained in this first election of our new republic.
It is, to my mind, unacceptable, and will forever be a blot on our democratic record and aspirations. I do believe most strongly that such a state of affairs being allowed to obtain should offend our vaunted national sense of fairness to its very core. One should not allow a challenge to become a crisis.
It really behoves those in positions of power and authority to apply, to this sphere, the creative, imaginative, proactive, visionary and transformative Thought, Energy, and Leadership which we know exist, and which we must acknowledge are all imperative if we are to move together from “We Surviving” to “We Thriving”. Post haste. “Actions speak louder than words…”. I’m a Jimmy Cliff Boy!
I have spoken about it for many years – long before the Thursday, 24 May, 2018 election results – and I will again touch on it now by asking if we should not seriously re-think our First-Past-The-Post system …? Let me be clear here – it is a damned nonsense to go about saying we are a One-Party State … and, having said that, is there anything better than our First-Past-The-Post system that we should consider?
Again very best wishes to the new administration as it assumes office. Very best wishes to our new republic as we move on from this day. To justice for all and the principle that each one matters may we always be fiercely committed. And be strong agents for their realisation. The lack of a Parliamentary Opposition makes the active engagement and vigilance of Citizens – individually and organised collectively – all the more crucial.
God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change…
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.
[Reinhold Neibuhr]
This column was offered as a Letter to the Editor.
