Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley became the second Caribbean politician to win all the seats in a national Parliament on three occasions as she led the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) to yet another whitewash of her opponents in the Barbados general election.
Mottley, 60, follows former Grenadian Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell, who earlier this year announced he was bowing out of active politics after he had become the first regional leader to win all the seats in his country’s Parliament.
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She led the BLP to consecutive clean sweeps since winning all 30 seats in the Barbados Parliament when she became the country’s first female prime minister following the May 24, 2018, general election.
“We are humbled by your confidence and trust. Thank you. Let us now come together as one people to continue building our nation,” the BLP said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.In Wednesday’s general election, Mottley comfortably regained her St Michael North East seat and later told supporters gathered at the party’s headquarters in the heart of the capital, Bridgetown, that her new cabinet is expected to be sworn in on Monday, with the first sitting of the new Parliament scheduled for next Friday.
“Something special happened in the country today,” Mottley said ahead of a planned thank-you rally on Saturday.She recalled that when she first won the general election in 2018, she had told Barbadians that her administration would “work hard” to stabilize the country.
“We thought we would move to a growth path,” she said, noting that soon after coming into office, Barbados, like the rest of the world, had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and that over the last two and a half years, the Government had started a mission to transform the country.
“We did not come to hold office, we come to make Barbados better and your lives better,” she said, noting that next month the BLP will be celebrating its 88th year as a political organization.
Mottley, an attorney, said that the party and Government remain focused on what “Barbadians want us to focus on” even as she warned against the challenges of ensuring the country’s democracy remains intact as it moves towards celebrating its 60th year of political independence and its fifth year as a republic.
She said Barbadians must also accept the responsibility for the transformation of the country and that everyone must band together to deal with both the local and geopolitical challenges.
Mottley said she was also concerned about the situation regarding the main opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP), insisting that Barbados needs “strong institutions,” recalling also her efforts to have the party represented in the Senate following the previous two resounding defeats.
Meanwhile, the DLP leader, Ralph Thorne, was defeated in the St John’s constituency, polling 1,876 votes as against 2,327 for the winner Charles Griffith of the BLP and 236 votes for the candidate, Kemar Stuart.
Thorne, who was elected to represent the Christ Church South district for the BLP in the last general election but crossed the floor to become Opposition leader, said of the latest defeat, “We acquitted ourselves well, fought a clean campaign.”
“The result is quite disappointing, no explanation for it,” he said as he conceded defeat.
On Wednesday, he complained of being unable to cast his ballot in the election, telling reporters that he had resided in Christ Church East for more than 20 years.
He said he was being told to go to another constituency to vote, but “the position I take is that to vote in Rendezvous is to commit fraud, certainly as it relates to my address”.
“So, I consider that I have been denied the right to vote due to an administrative error by the Electoral and Boundaries Commission,” he told reporters.
But university lecturer and former DLP president, Dr Ronnie Yearwood, said that the electorate had sent yet another “clear message” to the party.
“You can’t lose three times in this way and believe what you are doing,” Yearwood said, urging the party to undertake a reform of itself. “This is not where we want to be…but the public has given the party a third defeat”.
Political scientist and pollster, Peter Wickham, said while the ruling BLP has “grown and evolved”, the same cannot be said of the DLP.
He said the election result is “more about the DLP and what it has to do”, adding “it has to make hard decisions”.
Wickham said that the campaign of the DLP was “horrible” and that the leader had to step down.
“The party has to start looking for a new leader and identify new talent,” he added.
For the first time in its political history, the general election was observed by foreign observer teams from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the Commonwealth. CMC
