2022 in retrospect: Politics and crime in the Caribbean

By Peter Richards

Two years after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic severely impacted the Caribbean, regional countries in 2022 re-opened their borders, cautiously returning to some form of normalcy while dealing with high levels of criminality, struggling economies and staging general elections.

And while the COVID-19 pandemic had not resulted in the mass infections and deaths as had been the case in the past 24 months, the Caribbean has had to deal with the socio-economic impact as well as the many COVID variants.

In The Bahamas for example, a joint report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated the total cost of the impacts and effects of COVID-19 on the country to the tune of US$9.5 billion, with tens of thousands of job losses and long-lasting effects on the country’s tourism sector.

New health concerns in the form of the Monkeypox virus and malaria were also issues the Caribbean had to deal with in 2022. The outbreak of malaria in Haiti was reminiscent of 2010, when the disease, typically spread by water contaminated with the feces of a sick person, killed an estimated 10,000 people in an outbreak that was blamed on a United Nations peacekeeping force.

Barbados signaled the region’s adherence to democratic rule when on January 19, voters went to the polls in a snap general election Prime Minister Mia Mottley had called18 months ahead of the constitutional deadline.

Despite the failed attempt by the small opposition, Barbados Sovereignty Party (BSB), in asking the High Court to postpone the elections, Barbadians bought into the philosophy that they are “safer with Mia” wholesale and re-elected the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) into government with a second consecutive clean sweep of the 30 seats in Parliament, condemning the main opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP) to a second whitewash.

The BLP became only the second political organisation in the Caribbean to sweep all the seats in an election on consecutive occasions. The other time that had been achieved was in Grenada when Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell led his New National Party (NNP) in winning all 15 seats in 2018.

But on June 23 last year, Grenadians booted Mitchell out of office, refusing to give him his wish for a last victory in a general election by electing 44-year-old attorney, Dickon Mitchell, who a few months earlier had been elected leader of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), as the new head of government in the Spice Isle.

“Thank you from the bottom of each and every one of our hearts. This victory is not ours, but yours,” the NDC leader said.

Like, Mottley, Mitchell 75, had called the general election ahead of the constitutional deadline of March 2023.

Another Caribbean leader, who was unable to take advantage of an early poll was Dr. Timothy Harris in St. Kitts-Nevis. Beset by political infighting within his coalition Team Unity government, Harris had no choice but to face the electorate only two years after a landslide victory in 2020.

Disgruntled members of the coalition had filed a motion of no confidence in Harris, even as they left the “door ajar” for some form of reconciliation to end the rift that had split the six-year-old government.

In the end, the political shenanigans on the twin island Federation proved too much for the coalition and seven years after being booted out of office, the main opposition St. Kitts Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) returned to corridors of power on August 5.

The SKNLP won six of the 11 seats with the former coalition partners, the People’s Labour Party (PLP) of  Harris winning one seat, the same as the People’s Action Movement (PAM) while the Nevis-based Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) won all three seats on the sister isle.

“It is indeed a pleasure to be given the opportunity by the people of St. Kitts and Nevis to be your prime minister. I also recognize that it is an office that I do not own and I am only here at the behest of the people and I also know that I am here for a limited time,” Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew, said soon after being sworn into office.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit read correctly the winds of change in his country and called a snap general election on December 6, to the surprise of the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP), whose leader, Lennox Linton, had announced his decision to step down in October.

Skerrit, 50, has been in power since 2004, and in 2019 led his Dominica Labour Party (DLP) into victory by winning 18 of the 21 seats. He defended his decision to call the election two years ahead of the constitutional deadline, even as the opposition parties had urged supporters to boycott the event, claiming that the government had gone back on a promise of having electoral reform ahead of the next election there.

“I am a villain for calling an election in Dominica when I chose, but Timothy Harris in St. Kitts-Nevis collapsed his own government in two years and he is a gentleman. I am a villain for calling an election under three years in Dominica, but Sister Mia Mottley in Barbados is a genius for having called a snap election and in an even shorter period than I have done,” Skerrit said.

“A party in Grenada won all the seats, not once, not twice, but three times over the years and democracy has never been under threat in that country,” he said, adding “I am a villain for calling an election when the opposition has its pants off”.

In the end, Skerrit led the DLP to a resounding 19-2 victory with two independent candidates winning their seats in traditional opposition strongholds of Salisbury and Marigot.

But not all the political changes in the Caribbean came through the ballot boxes. In the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Dr. Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley, was sworn in on May 5 as the new Premier of the British Overseas Territory, a few hours after the House of Assembly unanimously passed a no-confidence resolution revoking the appointment of Andrew Fahie.

In late April, Fahie was detained in Miami by US agents posing as cocaine traffickers from a Mexican drug cartel. The US alleged he agreed a US$700,000 payment to allow traffickers to use BVI ports with an undercover informant.

A United States judge ruled that he could be released on a US$500,000 bond pending his trial and that he would have to remain in monitored confinement in his daughters’ apartment.

Apart from Fahie’s embarrassing arrest, the BVI has had to deal with what the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) regarded as “a retrograde step” the move to abolish the Parliament with direct rule from London.

“It is clear to us that, in principle, it is ill advised to impose direct colonial rule and the history of such imposition in the Caribbean has never delivered the desired result,” the OECS said in the statement, while indicating it had taken note of the position by the duly elected BVI government “which, while welcoming the recommendations arising from the Inquiry, rejects the intention of the British government to impose direct rule on the BVI.

Governor John Rankin said among the recommendations of a report of a one-man Commission of Inquiry (COI) that had examined allegations of corruption and abuse of office by elected and statutory officials was the BVI government cease to exist in its current format for at least two years.

But the OECS as well as the wider CARICOM grouping argued that the historical responsibility for strengthening governance in the BVI must rest on the shoulders of the elected representatives and the people of the BVI themselves.

In the neighboring Cayman Islands, the Speaker of the House, McKeeva Bush, was still hanging on to office, even though Governor Martyn Roper and others have called for his resignation in relation to his “inappropriate behavior towards women” that they said “should not be tolerated in any society.

Premier Wayne Panton had called on the 67 year-old Bush, a former premier, to step down following allegations that while intoxicated, he sexually harassed at least two women at a cocktail party hosted by the Tourism Ministry during a Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) conference.

In Barbados, the former deputy speaker and government legislator, Neil Rowe, will re-appear in a magistrate’s court on January 30 next year, after being charged with rape and in St. Lucia, the President of the Senate, Stanley Felix, had his senatorial appointment revoked after he appeared in court on a charge of perverting the course of justice. Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre said as head of the government he “demands the highest levels of professionalism and integrity from all public [officials] at all times”.

Opposition legislator, Adrian Gibson, was granted US$150,000 bail after he appeared in a Bahamas Magistrate court on charges of abuse of power while he served as executive chairman of the Water and Sewerage Corporation.

The 37-year-old attorney faces a total of 56 counts on allegations that he failed to declare his interest in contracts awarded by the corporation.