Head of the Caribbean Development Research Services, Peter Wickham.
Former General Secretary of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) George Pilgrim’s decision to challenge its current President Verla Depeiza for leadership is being deemed as unnecessary by one political scientist.
Head of the Caribbean Development Research Services, Peter Wickham opined there was unlikely to be a difference in who would be the better leader for the party at this time and as such the challenge might only result in “an unsettling” of the political institution.
“I think that Pilgrim is a good guy and has been part of the DLP for a long time, but I do not believe that he is the leader that could take the DLP out of the wilderness and into Jerusalem. I do not see it. I sense he will identify himself more like an Executive President where he will do the work of bringing the party back together, mending the fences, getting the party back into shape and getting candidates even though he himself may not be one going forward. If he does take that role I believe some good can come of it.
“But frankly, I don’t see either of them being the salvation of the DLP. However, if it was a question of one or the other, I would have stayed with Depeiza to the extent that she offers some sense of institutional stability,” Wickham told The Barbados Advocate.
Pointing to the belief held by some that the current President has not delivered on making changes to the DLP as quickly as she should have, Wickham insisted Depeiza made “a fundamental errorin believing her role was to attack andunsettle the BLP in office.”
“My view has always been that her main role should have been to restructure and to rebuild the DLP, but two years in she has not publicly identified a single candidate, although we have heard that Dr. Denis Lowe has been selected and I think there is a lack of clarity regarding these kinds of events that have made her vulnerable. Personally, I have thought she would be the better option to carry the party forward, especially since there were rumours from the very beginning that she was just a ‘stop gap’ and I fear that George Pilgrim’s return to take the post from her is essentially confirming that she was just that. That would be my concern – that this in a sense would be an unsettling of the DLP that is a bit unnecessary,” he explained.