THE upcoming election is going to be different to any that have come before.
So says Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, as he charged that the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is making many promises to the electorate, some unrealistic, in its quest to secure the reins of power. He made the comments while speaking on Sunday night at the opening of the Democratic Labour Party’s St. Peter branch office at Mile and a Quarter, St. Peter.
“That’s how they have been doing it, promising everybody something in the hope that in so doing, they can undermine the confidence of the ordinary man and woman in the Democratic Labour Party and in the Government… Now as I have said before, the worst thing you can do in politics is to underestimate the intelligence of ordinary people and the people have seen through it,” he maintained.
PM Stuart’s comments came as he contended that the “political cynicism” that is manifesting in this country needs to be confronted. The point came as he made it clear that the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) does not intend to sit by and not put up a fight when the bell is rung.
“Once the Democratic Labour Party was not in the field, as Chris Sinckler said and as others have said, everybody was saying, ‘Oh, it is only a matter of the day, it is over…’ The Democratic Labour Party is a sleeping giant dangerous when awakened, and that sleeping giant has now been awakened and will clear everything away from its path as we go through to the next election day,” he said.
The political leader also said the BLP has been trying to give the electorate the impression that what has happened in Barbados over the last decade had nothing to do with the global financial recession, but instead the mismanagement of the economy by the DLP. But adamant that nothing could be further from the truth, PM Stuart defended his Government’s stewardship, contending that they have been able to keep Barbados stable. With that in mind, the DLP Leader said that this claim of mismanagement has been a tactic used by the BLP from the time his party took office.
“We came into office in January 2008, Parliament opened sometime in February 2008, and our first major Parliamentary debate was to debate the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure in March of 2008. Now if a Government gets elected in January, the Cabinet is appointed at the end of January, Parliament has its Throne Speech and so on in February and the Estimates are in March, those Estimates would have to be the Estimates of the outgoing administration. Do you know we went to Parliament with those Estimates and the Barbados Labour Party said they were the wrong Estimates?” he added.
He went on to say that as the country approaches the date for the election, the “politics of magic is being held up before the people of Barbados”, with the BLP promising to do things that were never done.
“All the problems that other countries are experiencing and having little hell to wrestle to the ground, by just the chanting of an abracadabra they are going to get all of these problems solved and all is going to be right in Barbados forever and ever, Amen. I would believe all of that if Ms. Mottley was a new quantity in politics,” he said.
Stuart noted that the Opposition Leader, who was a minister of the Crown for 14 years, holding several portfolios, said she has a record that can be examined, and he said, such will be done by the DLP during the pending election campaign. (JRT)