Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
by Marsha Hinds
When I got news that Barbados was heading into elections three short weeks away, I was still putting in some mummy time with my children. This is the first year in well over a decade that I have been able to make the babies my focus rather than service to women and girls.
What being fully focussed on my family when the general election was called in Barbados made me reflect on is how our elections in Barbados and the Commonwealth Caribbean are moving further away from ideas of democracy and nation building to decisions made by high paid political kingmakers who have nothing but the singular political interests of one leader at heart.
The end of the year is a time when families huddle and spend a bit of relaxation time together. There are gatherings for work and other types of merriment. By two days after Christmas, many are fussing with poaching back the
leftover bowls in the right stack for the fridge to close or trying to bear out the noise of new gifts bought for younger family members.
The focus is certainly not heavy politics and with an election constitutionally due more than 16 months away, Barbadians had no reason to expect to be dealing with their families and holidays and a snap election too. The major reason given for the election was because Barbados had become politically divided and this was taking away from our focus on the COVID fight. The argument fell in before the end of the announcement.
The Prime Minister of Barbados was able to list off a number of national achievements, important among them the completion of the isolation facility at Checker Hall in St. Lucy and becoming a Republic a few short days ago.
A politically divided country does not achieve those kinds of national gains but even within a well adjusted political climate, in a country led on the principle of democracy, there will be disagreement and dissent. To expect total solidarity as a political leader is disconcerting. Barbadians have now been forced to cut their holidays short and sit in the reality of what they want for the next chapter of our journey as a nation. These are my thoughts as I sit into the exercise.
One of the major strategies to combat COVID worldwide, and indeed in Barbados, the monitoring unit has been asking Barbadians to restrict movement. From the lockdowns to the curfews that we have basically negotiated for the last two years – and are still under- every one of us have been making the sacrifice. For a government then to dissolve political stability right on the cusp of another wave of a new variant of COVID and send Barbadians into the streets to canvass and vote is highly reckless.
By virtue of being a small open economy, dependent on tourist dollars and forced to forfeit the best restrictive measures for a set that still allow financial inflows, we know that Omicron is inevitable. Based on what we know about incubation periods and the rapidity of spread with Omicron, we should expect to be seeing our daily case count ride by the third week in January.
Calling elections at this time is a boss political tactic at the level of political one upmanship, but what about the staff of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission and all the poll and constituency workers needed to pull off an election? The Prime Minister noted that due to the size of Barbados, each life we lose to COVID is counted and felt. How is the reconciliation of that statement to then ask our elderly population to risk life and limb to exercise franchise at the height of a highly contagious COVID wave when there mis no constitutional need or pressing circumstance warranting election?
On the matter of constitution, perhaps there is no need for an election under our old constitution but there is a need under our post republic constitution? The people of Barbados have been asked to go into a Republic without full sight of the constitution associated with that move.
We are now being further required to renew a mandate for a political party that will unite us as a nation and quell dissenting voices. There may be nothing at all that is sinister or untoward about renewing a political mandate before the setting of the Republic Constitution, but it feels contrary to the democratic right to an informed vote as a choice.
The trend of setting stakeholder groups aside is one that arose out of the BLP’s political of inclusion in the Owen Arthur era of governance. I have spoken and written extensively about what an astute and effective leader I think Arthur was, but I have also taken exception to the silencing and consolidation of civil society and other voices in society into a single political narrative. Traditional work of civil society, such as food hamper donation, has all been coloured with hues of political red and yellow. Although civil society provides up to 60 per cent of social and welfare service in Barbados, at no time has civil society been adequately included in the national COVID plan.
The 30-0 win of 2018 seems to have given us a magnified politics of inclusion, where there is seemingly no room for anything other than political whips and party line toe – that kind of politics and a new Republican status could potentially be an explosive cocktail. Requesting a new political mandate at this time has to be seen as a referendum on the type of inclusion or exclusion we want under a Republican frame.
Another interesting consequence of this election is the freeze out of the Diaspora from franchise. Increasingly Barbados and the Commonwealth Caribbean has recognised that in order to benefit from the richness of our populations it is sensible to tap into transnational identities to keep Barbadians engaged beyond special limits. I read adding Rihanna to the list of National Heroes as a further affirmation of that logic. Then the impact of that move is thwarted by a ‘politricking’ play.
The Diaspora needs a bit more wiggle time to be able to exercise franchise. Vacations have to be negotiated. Due to COVID, international spaces are also discouraging non-essential travel at the moment. Republican status seemed to be an opportune time to fix the date of elections. This remove manipulation of individual leaders that saw us pushed to limits one way before the calling of the last election and now a swing of the pendulum in the next direction for an equally disruptive early election. It is clear that the choice was made in someone’s best interest- the beneficiary is just certainly not Barbados.
Since it is hard for me to divorce my reflections about Barbados from the experiences of women and girls in the space, permit me to give this matter final word. I was disappointed at the term of the first female Prime minister of Barbados. I did not conflate Prime Minister Mottley being a woman with an expectation of attention to women’s issues in Barbados. I developed the expectation after the Prime Minister deliberately co-opted space within both the local and international women’s lobby by defining herself and situating herself as a female politician.
On the one hand, the Prime Minister of Barbados wants to be compared to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand but on the other hand women are being denied protection orders in Barbados because of judicial culling of the meaning of ‘former spouse’. If there is no change of tone under a female Prime Minister in national misogyny and patriarchy, that has to be a consideration at the time women voters are being asked to renew a mandate.
After flirtations, and indeed full-on relationships with both of the political parties in Barbados, it is my view that the party political model used by strong men like Errol Barrow and Eric Williams to take us into our nationalist period no longer suit us. Whereas the intentions of Barrow and Williams and that era of politicians were focussed on national nurturing and development for these respective post-colonial societies, I am clear that the current shenanigans are political plays purely undergirded by individual self-interest.
In that context, I think the voters of St. Lucia have a sound plan – keep changing the government every five years as the best mechanism of check and balances that the electorate has.
Marsha Hinds is a postdoctoral fellowship in leadership and gender at the University of Guelph and advocate and Co-director, Operation Safe Space, Barbados.
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