Submitted by Pachamama
Will Clyde Mascoll take the spoils?
The Nation Newspaper today carries the essential components of an internal party memorandum from Owen Seymour Arthur (OSA) to Kerrie Symmonds. A memo which is reported to have expressed a ‘lack of confidence’ in Mia Amor Mottley (MAM) as leader of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), the official opposition, in the Parliament of Barbados. This comes after last fortnight’s revelations that the same OSA had called a significant policy initiative by MAM as a ‘gimmick’. Indeed, these are amongst the most sever blows that have ever been delivered to any political leader in the history of Barbadian politics. Maybe in the history of Christendom.
Arthur’s animus towards Mottley is now clearly too deep for this party to present any semblance of a united front against a weakened Democratic Labour Party (DLP), far less play a larger role in helping the country to navigate the presently deep and widening economic circumstances. These public disclosures are indeed the tip of the iceberg of the deeply negative personal relationship between Arthur and Mottley that have built up over several years. Arthur has also expressed disappointment about the circumstances which led to Mottley’s most recent elevation to the leadership of the BLP, as happened after the elections.
Both Arthur and Mottley seem, for this moment, to be working for Fruendal Stuart and the governing Democratic Labour Party (DLP). Bobby Morris’s work, as a chief political adviser to Stuart, is being made much less difficult these days. For there is nothing that is more effective that this government could do to avoid a robust debate about the economy, than this public war of words between the titans in the BLP. A self-inflicted wound that harms the possibilities of the BLP forming the next government, as some are predicting those new elections could be expected long ahead of scheduled. Remember, we have had general elections only about six months ago. We would be the last to suggest that there is any large-scaled conspiracy between the parties involved. However, we are persuaded that factions will benefit from these events. In none of these scenarios would MAM benefit from Arthur’s escalating and public broadsides. Neither will the BLP, in the short run.
Our leanings on the experience of a renowned Caribbean political consultant have led us to the determination that OSA still feels obligated to Mascoll, who may now be free of his academic pursuits. Mascoll, as a leader of the then DLP opposition, had assisted Arthur in ways which some still consider not to have been in the interests of the then opposition DLP. For this he has paid a high price. This personal obligation deeply inspires OSA to kill two birds with a single stone. That Arthur senses that an election may very well be the only way out of the political-economic crisis which the country now faces. In those circumstances, he is ill-prepared to allow his nemesis, from within, to be allowed an open field between herself and Ilaro Court. That Arthur has determined that there are slim pickings for leadership within the BLP but will be content to have Kerrie Symmonds be a placeholder with the understanding that he (Arthur) will demit office and create the circumstances in Saint Peter for Mascoll to be then elected and thereafter assume his ‘rightly’ place at the leadership of the BLP with the help of a still numerical majority, on the opposition benches, which Arthur believes he still controls. Then a general election could be justly called, in Arthur’s mind at least. For Mia, the political undertakers are busily preparing the arrangements and we predict no set of circumstances in which she will be able to avoid their intentions or the vengeance of the god of the BLP, Owen Seymour Arthur.
@ MillertheAnunnaki
@David [BU]
@Balance
@Are We there yet
@Bush Tea
@ Hants
@ BU contributors whose sterling contributions show your love of our country
Age is supposed to bring wisdom for most persons. For a few it only brings wisdom teeth which become impacted and have to be (painfully) removed
Having neither wisdom nor wisdom teeth, I will borrow such wisdom from the Bible.
No gents, ladies or atheists this is not an attempt to proselyte. No, not at all, I will borrow a little of Its Wisdom to make a point.
Matthew 7:20 (King James Version) “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them”
It is a very simple but practical statement which simply means that in all of the hullabaloo, where all of the gentlemen are, and the Lady is, strutting around, both sides, DLP and BLP, I have yet to see one of them step forward and, without any Eminent Committee, Avinash, or Alleyne, step up to the plate and, while using their avowed newspaper the Nation, put forward serious proposals, without any reservations, without any fear that the next side is going teif dem ideas, and state what they will do to make the country live.
OK, this may be a naive idea but who gains if our collective ship is sinking and the BLP, embodied in Owen Seethru or Mummy why you …., purports to have the silver bullet and keeps it chambered in this hour of need?
If the country sinks it is both DLPites and BLPites that perish after all!
If Owen or Mia feels that they know how to pull us out of the mire, publish their solutions, work to make them happen and know that, for a majority of the Bajans now facing dire times, we at least will remember what you have done.
Note carefully that I have not included the names of Kerrie, nor Dale Marshall, bereft as they are of any ideas worth implementing.
When the BLP gets back in PLEAAAASSSEEEE dont bring those ejalculates of dubious efficacy back to the House of Assembly with you.
Stop all the lotta long talk and let us see what wunna is capable of.
Oh and since wunna know that wunna cant rust the Nation or de Advocate, send wunna plans to save our country here to BU so that a permanent record of wunna pretence to know how to save this faltering ship can be blogged permanently
“Balance faces the danger of assuming that everybody here has to be a Bee or a Dee and that there will never be political space for others. That narrow berth, we are afraid, has long been surpassed by this writer and assumes too much.”
Not necessarily Pacha, I have been labelled as well but I do not worry because I know the cap does not fit; but my view is that my moaning and groaning over internal issues in the fractured BLP to their own detriment should take second place to commentary on the mismanagement of the economy in the last six years. We seem not to want to initiate debate on the reasons for our present disastrous predicament and put the blame fairly and squarely where it lies. That is critical if we are to move forward.
Doe George Griffith have a following within the party? Is he not a rejected candidate? what influence can he have at party level? The BLP in its present state need to be dissolved.
If Reudon Eversley had not made recent comments which might be interpreted as critical of PM Stuart, there is no way Starcom would have invited him into a studio.
Can we really expect to have a balanced discussion of the Owen Arthur / Mia Mottley conflict when Starcom has a panel with Peter Wickham and Reudon Eversley? Two men who are clearly not Arthur supporters.
You add Harold Hoyte who was called a Negrocrat by Arthur.
I am certainly not here to defend Arthur but VOB like its owner the Nation newspaper needs to be more balanced in assembling moderators, panels and columnists.
Peter Wickham has already declared his hand. I do not think that he should be part of any panel claiming to be an independent voice.
We all know how he feels about Mottley on one side as opposed to Owen Arthur and Freundel Stuart on the other.
David Ellis and Dennis Johnson are fair but Wickham views need to be balanced by someone who does not have an axe to grind.
@NationBLPpaper
Who would your alternatives have been?
This is a submission built on conjecture and innuendo. In other words, utter nonsense.
@ Brathwaite
We were much more charitable to you in our last comments. This is the central problem with party hacks like you. On the one hand you pretend to be interested in what is right viz a viz your previous denunciation of OSA. On the other hand however, you are so wedded to an illegal, immoral organization called the BLP that in order to protect that proscribed organization you can be easily herded to drink a colourless cool-aide.
@ Brathwaite
Again, we have looked at this piece and based on public and private information we have tried to read the politics of Barbados. We can’t pretend that everything we project is true or will be true, but it is a bit rich for you, an emotional party hack, who has just sought to protect your leader by publicly cussing OSA, to tell us that our reading is less than worthy. But it is our ready and we don’t recognize a requirement for our reading to meet some arbitrary bar set by you or anybody else. This is real problem with you pretend academic types in the Caribbean, you lack the courage to see the future. An the end of the day you are merely a party pimp and OSA will continue to undermine MAM regardless of your puerile pleadings.
@ Pachamama
Thanks. Please note that you gave your opinions and I gave mine. Ad hominem remarks are unnecessary, but if that is your preferred style, not a problem with me. Keep well.
@ Brathwaite
Thanks for confirming our now new reading of the psychology of the classical Bajan political party pimp.