The controversy swirling around the discovery of a $7 500 cheque written to Deputy Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw by a civil engineering firm could land critics before the courts facing a lawsuit, she said Sunday as she again denied any impropriety over the affair.
The cheque, which emerged as evidence of stolen property from a burglary of her constituency office late last year, sparked a flurry of questions from critics, including Democratic Labour Party leader Dr Ronnie Yearwood who called for Bradshaw to be sacked.
At a Barbados Labour Party St Michael South East Branch meeting at Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School on Sunday, the Deputy PM maintained that no laws had been broken and that she planned to take legal action against those who suggested otherwise.
“I want you to understand that those who took to the call-in programmes trying to defame my character and to discredit my reputation, they have received the pre-action letter for the lawsuit to be dropped in their tail. I want to make it clear this evening, let them keep talking, because everyone that talks, the letter going come and drop in their tail. I am not the one,” she declared. “So if they want an equaliser for the Barbados Labour Party, it is not Santia Bradshaw.”
Attacks on government policy and initiatives are normal in politics, Bradshaw told party supporters, but she scoffed at any attempts at a smear campaign.
“If you are going to fight the Barbados Labour Party on its record, I ain’t got no problem with that. If we don’t do the right thing in the name of the people, even our own people have the right to tell us we doing nonsense.
But what I would not tolerate is the innuendos, the attempts to defame the character of people who are working hard in the name of the people of this country, when they themselves cannot stand on any good footing to say what they are doing. They need to get their house in order,” she said.
Bradshaw also thanked the Prime Minister for supporting her efforts to resolve the matter. She rejected calls for her resignation, maintaining that there had been no wrongdoing.
“As I told Prime Minister Mottley and as I told the Cabinet when I addressed them, the prime minister would not have had to ask for my resignation if I had done something wrong, cause I come up understanding individual responsibility and collective responsibility. I understand the line in the sand which is drawn when you do something inappropriate that can discredit not only yourself but also your political party.
“My position remains the same on integrity in public life and the legislation as it did before the campaign in 2018. I have nothing to hide. I ain’t got no money stashed no way, I ain’t got no big bank account overseas… I ain’t got nothing so.”
Bradshaw said Barbadians should not be guided by comments intended to undermine the BLP’s achievements.
“Do not be deterred by the comments, do not be deterred by the lies and the attempts to scandalise members of this Barbados Labour Party,” she urged. “Sometimes you only throw stones when you know that there is something good in the house. It could be a case that there is a lot going on in this Labour Party and in this government that they are trying to find something, and hope that something sticks, but they can’t find what they are looking for.”
Errol Clarke, managing director of Errol Clarke Associates, the firm that wrote the cheque to Bradshaw, has said the money was for Bradshaw’s charity, among several other causes it assisted in 2023, and that no favours were being sought.
“That contribution was not made with any intent of receiving favours from the minister or the Ministry of Transport Works and Water Resources (MTWWR) as I am not currently working for MTWW nor does the company have any active bids before that ministry for consideration,” Clarke said in a statement late last year.
“The last project on which I worked for MTWW was awarded to us before the current minister was in charge of her current ministry.” (SB)
