This weekly column of Tennyson Joseph, Associate Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Central University is of interest given the internal upheaval ongoing in the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) – an upheaval that has implication for the quality of government practiced.
Over to Yearwood
THE BLOWS AND COUNTER-BLOWS have been laid and the dust is settling.
The main individual casualty appears to be the general secretary Steve Blackett, now suspended, pending further internal investigations.
The larger victim is the entire Democratic Labour Party (DLP) which has become the laughing stock of the Caribbean, in a context where the DLP can ill afford to risk any further deterioration.
More importantly, the story could have been so very different.
What was required was so simple, logical and commonsensical, that having taken the opposite road, the DLP now appears dysfunctional, archaic and out of tune with Caribbean democratic development. No wonder the young people are shaking their heads in disbelief and are generally turned off by politics.
What needed to be done? Once Barbados Labour Party (BLP) backbencher Ralph Thorne had resigned from the BLP and had formally submitted his application to the DLP, and given the terms of the party’s constitution which automatically conferred political leader status upon the Leader of the Opposition, there should have immediately been a closed-door meeting between Dr Ronnie Yearwood, the sitting president, and Thorne, the newly emergent political leader.
The main objective of the meeting would have been to determine their respective roles, the duration of any agreed upon terms of engagement, and “what the final resolution” of the existing agreement would be.
The spirit of the meeting should have been guided by the fact that Yearwood does not have a seat in Parliament, the DLP has no representation in the House of Assembly and receives no subvention.
Finally, such a mature internal discussion would have set the next annual conference or general election (whichever is soonest) as the marker for fully settling the leadership question.
It is no fault of Thorne that neither Yearwood nor the DLP had any seats. There is an air of opportunistic hopelessness in the argument that “if Thorne had stayed in the BLP, then there would have been no problem”.
Much of the blame for the internal confusion can be placed at the feet of the pro-Yearwood circle who adopted a no-holdsbarred, scorched-earth response to Thorne’s reabsorption into the DLP. Was any or sufficient thought given to the party or mechanisms of democratic inclusion of party members in resolving the leadership question?
Even worse, the response was unsophisticated and smacked of political desperation. Locking doors, turning off lights, storming out of meetings and asserting a policy of “criticise from outside” is neither an effective nor a sustainable response.
To the extent that this tactic has not only been defeated internally, but has brought the DLP into serious question, a strong political case can be made for the resignation of Yearwood, for mishandling the Thorne crossover. This will resolve the current leadership crisis of the DLP and begin the rebuilding, post-Thorne.
Over to you now, Ronnie Yearwood.
Tennyson Joseph is Associate Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Central University. Email tjoe2008@live.com
Source: Nation
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