Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by John Goddard
I wish, first of all, to congratulate the Barbados Labour Party on its massive election victory, and to offer commiserations to the vanquished.
However, there are some shortcomings of our electoral system which need to be addressed if we are to boast of being a model of free and fair elections in Latin America, the Caribbean and even farther afield.
A number of the weaknesses I propose to highlight have been present for a long time, but the recent elections brought them more to the fore.
First of all, we continue to play cat and mouse with the calling of elections. In Barbados, every club and organisation has a set time for elections. But, elections for the institution which has the biggest impact on the lives of citizens depend on the whim and fancy of a Prime Minister, clearly with the intention of catching opposing parties and candidates unawares.
Thus, an election, constitutionally due in 2023, is held in January, 2022, giving the electoral office and candidates three weeks to prepare. The fact that staff of the electoral department were forced to work until three and four in the morning in order to have everything in place for the poll shows how ill-advised the decision to call the election at such short notice was. We are lucky that the department has such competent officers.
For the most part, candidates, other than those of the ruling party, had very little time to familiarise themselves with constituents. Next, up to the night before the poll, there was a nightly parade of ministers on CBC television. Also on TV with monotonous regularity were BLP politicians milling around road repairs which we were told were not gimmicks, but rather projects which were in the pipeline and were co-incidentally coming to fruition a few days before General Elections.
Nobody seemed worried about insulting our intelligence. All these amounted to the high visibility of candidates of the ruling party while those of the other parties had to rely on posters and house to house canvassing.
Now to the controversial issue of the disenfranchisement of voters. The constitution clearly states who is allowed to vote.
It was wrong, therefore, for government to call an election without first making provision for more than 6000 persons in isolation to exercise their franchise.
It has been done without difficulty in several countries.
Why not in Barbados? In addition, calling elections in the middle of COVID resulted in several people, especially our seniors, being afraid to go to the polling stations to cast their ballot. That, too, led to a form of disenfranchisement (voter suppression).
Lack of financial resources is a handicap in modern elections, and no one can deny that this problem adversely affected the opposing parties far more than it did the ruling party whose campaign showed that it was not short of cash.
The time has come for monetary donations to be carefully monitored, and the state should provide a sum of campaign funds for each party, depending on how many candidates the party is fielding.
Our system is mature enough to accommodate a change from “First past the Post” which can lead to the kind of lopsided parliament we again have. Proportional Representation will better reflect the will of voters.
The party with the most votes will still form the government, but other parties will win seats according to their percentage of the vote. So, for example, in this election, the BLP with 69 per cent of the vote would occupy 20 seats, the DLP 9 and the APP 1.
The conditions I have outlined place opposition parties at a severe disadvantage. If our democracy is to thrive, the playing field must be made as level as possible.
In a race, we do not give any competitor a head start, nor do we tie the legs of all but one athlete. All the athletes go to the starting line, depend on the shot from the same gun to begin running and use their ability to win the race.
John Goddard, retired but still an educator.
