How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We hesitated to join in the post-election commentary of the last general election in Barbados. It seems to us that every Barbados Labour Party (BLP) politician, newspaper, call-in program, under the street light conversation are now rifted with discussion on the demise of the late Prime Minister Owen Arthur — the Americans refer to it as ‘Monday Morning Quarterbacking’. Seems an appropriate analogy with the Super Bowl, the game which makes Americans go crazy, scheduled to be played today. We decided to offer a comment because unlike many of the political hypocrites emerging from under rocks, we have been public in our comments of Arthur long before the results of the last general election were known. Perhaps the fact that we did so under the cloak of anonymity explains it all!
Unlike the Right Excellent Errol Walton Barrow whose legacy was immediately known when he demitted office, Barbadians will have to wait to discern how history determines the legacy of Prime Minister Owen Arthur. We have a sneaky suspicion that it is one key reason why Arthur was inclined to run for a fourth term. The act of running and being victor in Election 2008 would have earned Arthur’s right to be recorded in history in a place exclusively reserve for him. Unfortunately for Arthur, he lost and as we alluded earlier, our historians will now have the job of affixing our late Prime Minister to his rightful place in our political history.
We have listened and read the comments of BLP insiders in the aftermath of the party’s defeat with a healthy interest. It is noticeable that a characteristic which was preached to Barbadians at the height of the Mascoll/Thompson leadership squabble, that is, the BLP was loathed to air dirty linen in public has now been tossed through the window. While we hold no brief for Arthur and have disagreed as demonstrated in many of our BU articles about some of his policies, we find the venom of the comments from BLP faithfuls to be interesting. The obvious question is where were these people who would have been able to impart their wisdom to Arthur before and during the political campaign. In the case of Clyde Griffith, one of the more vocal Arthur critics, we wonder why he was seen on the BLP platform if he felt so strongly about Arthur’s strategies. We are sure he was Chairman of a BLP meeting held in Eden Lodge. Would it not have done well for these dissenters to have raised concerns publicly before the last election so that the ‘party’ would have been able to respond to concerns before the election?
It is our belief that Arthur decided to run for a fourth term not only to secure the legacy we mentioned earlier, but there is another reason which the BU family has discussed several times. Arthur has moored the BLP to the political left; we believe that Arthur had grave concerns that the current leadership of the party would cause the party to revert to a position right of the political centre. Although many of us remain impress at the intellect of Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley, we think that there is a missing link. All is not lost for the Opposition Leader because she will have five years to initiate Operation Makeover.
Owen Arthur must feel betrayed by Griffith, Truss et al. Many BLP parliamentarians owe their lucrative pensions to the long coat tails of Arthur from the previous elections. With the exception of Mia Mottley, Ronald Toppin, Cynthia Forde and a couple others; the aura of Owen Arthur has tightly enveloped the BLP. Will Mia Mottley be able to fill the void which Arthur used the politics of inclusion to fill? Mia Mottley is an astute politician and we have no doubt that she knows that she will have to address some lifestyle issues, more importantly, she will have to attract new blood to the party to improve the talent pool caused by the departure of some veteran politicians.
Of interest to BU is the role the late Prime Minister will adopt on the backbench and the influence he is able to exercise in light of his handling of the Mascoll Affair to the obvious bemusement of the Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley.
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