Following the recent 2026 general election in Barbados, President, His Excellency Jeffrey Bostic and former Barbados Labour Party (BLP) cabinet member was forced to appoint two opposition senators. Under the contentious Section 75 of the Constitution of Barbados, the president executed the action because of the elephant too many in the country continue to ignore- Barbados continues to deal with a constitutional crisis. One caused by three consecutive unprecedented victories by the BLP winning ALL the seats in the parliament.
President Bostic appointed Senator Ryan Oneal Walters of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and Senator Karina Shelina Christina Goodridge of the Friends of Democracy (FOD). The appointment of Ryan Walters has piqued the interest given the recent DLP reorganisation. The newly elected President of the DLP elected in August this year has immediately set about trying to breathe life into a DLP party that has become increasingly irrelevant on the local political landscape. Some of us interested in improving the governance framework given our borrowed parliamentary system, wish him every success. Unlike his most recent predecessors, he cannot be accused as being a BLP ‘plant’.
One of the first decisions by Estwick was to appoint spokespersons to ‘shadow’ the performance of government and raise issues of public interest. Absent from his communication and from the team announced was the role of Senator Ryan Walters. It is no secret Walters is a member of the beleaguered DLP and as the most visible member of the DLP in the Upper Chamber, it was passing strange that his role was not clearly communicated to the public by Estwick in his first pronoucement. That it required a subsequent clarification should be regarded as a significant blunder and leaves room for political mischief.
Another issue that piqued the interest was Estwick’s view on the following as reported in the Nation newspaper:
Estwick’s say on oversight
Democratic Labour Party president Dr David Estwick believes Barbados does not need to wait for a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) or a substantive Auditor General appointment to begin assessing Government spending.
The former government minister argued yesterday that existing expenditure and revenue estimates already offer a workable, if imperfect, tool for accountability.
Responding to media questions on the prolonged absence of both a functioning PAC and a confirmed Auditor General during a press conference, Estwick said a close reading of the annual Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure allows analysts to track how money is allocated across Government programmes and subcategories, then compare those figures against the following year’s revised estimates to see whether funds were spent, underspent, or overspent.
“You can therefore carry out an evaluation that way,” he said.
“But you will not be able to get, I would say, real-time data.”
That gap, he suggested, is where the Auditor General’s Office should step in, since it has the power to request realtime financial data directly.
However, Estwick suggested that office has instead been consumed by “procedural irregularities”, issues he attributed less to wrongdoing than to weak systems, inadequate tendering procedures, and chronic understaffing across ministries.
“You can have a ministry or department that has a function, but if it needs 15 people to function and you only have five, you cannot upload the data in the time required,” he said, adding that this is where “a lot of the systems break down”.
Asked directly whether the lack of a substantive Auditor General amounted to a failure of the audit system, Estwick pushed back, noting that an acting Auditor General holds full authority to function in the role. The real shortfall, he said, lies in staffing levels needed to audit ministries, statutory corporations and Government-owned private companies alike, a complaint he said the Auditor General’s Office had raised many times. He contrasted that with the state’s willingness to fund other departments. “The Government can find the money to set up every other department around . . . but you can’t find the time and the money to effectively provide the human resource requirements for the Auditor General’s Office.”
Quoting economist Jim Rickards, Estwick said reform must start with an honest accounting of the current system’s flaws: “You can’t replace something with nothing,” he said. (BA)
The report suggests that Estwick has trivialised the absence of a functioning Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and Auditor General (AG). Surely any political party worth its salt should be focused on the deeper problem: a flawed governance framework that has allowed Auditor General’s reports to be delayed and, when eventually produced, routinely ignored by successive governments.
Yet, in his first pronouncement, Estwick argued that the DLP would still be well placed to scrutinise public finances because the annual Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure allow analysts to track allocations across government programmes and compare them with revised estimates in subsequent years to determine whether funds were spent, underspent, or overspent.
Make it make sense. On the one hand, we are told not to worry about the absence of a functioning PAC and Auditor General. On the other, the very institutions designed to verify government spending are being treated as optional? The Estimates reveal intended allocations; the Auditor General reveals exceptions based of the financial rules of government. Confusing the two is either an error or a political blindness.
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