‘Leadership’ Politics in Barbados
TOMORROW is expected to be D-Day for Barbados Opposition Leader Mia Mottley, who is seeking to be the new chairperson of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) in order to position herself to lead the party into the next general election.
But the 41-year-old lawyer, a tough political combatant, is instead facing the strong possibility of losing her current parliamentary post to former three-term prime minister Owen Arthur ahead of the party’s annual conference later this month where he could end up as the new chairman.
In this season of political apprehension and discontent in the Caribbean Community, the parliamentary parties of Barbados currently appear to be a hot topic.
There is high public interest in the BLP’s leadership squabbles, which are being reported in the Barbados media as “a palace coup in the making”, as they are taking place amid rising speculations of a snap general election in 2011 as a consequence of the critical health condition of Prime Minister David Thompson. Officially, general election is due January 2012.
Both the current ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and the opposition BLP have been doing well in concealing from the public for a number of years their often bitter internal divisions in contrast to the frequent public washing of dirty laundry by some of their regional counterparts.
Not anymore. Certainly not within recent years, as leadership squabbles, factionalism, personality clashes and, to a lesser extent, ideological differences have combined to place both the ‘Dems’ and ‘Bees’ in the category of other major parties that frequently fail to keep their internal problems under the lid.
While the principal political parties of the Caribbean Community subscribe to multi-party parliamentary democracy, there is a distinction between the leadership structure of the BLP and DLP and the overwhelming majority of other parties in the rest of Caricom.
Leadership Structure
The distinction might help to explain the current “leadership tussle” among the ‘Bees’, as well as the increasing sense of insecurity within the ‘Dems’ as a direct result of Prime Minister Thompson’s illness and last month’s cabinet reshuffle.
Unlike other Caricom parliamentary parties whose structure begins with an elected leader (in Jamaica a president) and includes a chairman and general secretary, both the DLP and BLP have a leadership system that can accommodate a chairman, general secretary and a parliamentary leader viewed, incorrectly, as “party leader”, when they do not form the government.
When in opposition, the parliamentary leader is chosen either by majority or unanimous vote (by the elected parliamentarians). The person voted for such a position would be ready to lead the party into a general election, more comfortably so if successful in occupying the chairmanship before a snap poll is called, as could well happen next year.
Such a development occurred in 1993 when Henry Forde (now Sir Henry) retired as Opposition leader on grounds of ill health, and made way for Owen Arthur’s election and subsequent success in leading the ‘Bees’ to power at the1994 snap poll that resulted from the downfall of then Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford’s DLP administration.
It is against this background that the current leadership squabbles in the BLP should be viewed, as incumbent Opposition Leader Mia Mottley strategises to unseat incumbent party chairman George Payne at the forthcoming annual conference later this month.
The critical hurdle Mottley has to first overcome is getting the majority vote from among the current nine BLP parliamentarians, with Arthur, her former leader and prime minister, currently holding the winning edge but yet to publicly confirm his participation in what threatens to be a fierce and potentially nasty duel at the party’s upcoming conference.
Currently, and contrary to some media reports, there have been no “aborted coups”, no ‘winner’ or ‘loser’, since a meeting at which both Mottley and Arthur are expected to be vital participants has yet to take place.
Arrangements are being finalised for it to be held tomorrow (October 18) to which both Arthur and Mottley (a former deputy prime minister and attorney general in Arthur’s administration) have been invited.
In the meantime, there are lots of political theatrics within the camp of the ‘Bees’, while the ‘Dems’ are striving to show a brave face as they cope with their own internal problems, including “leadership options”.
Other examples in the Caribbean
As readers would be aware, the two traditional dominant parties in Jamaica, as well as in Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana, are no strangers to the politics of division.
Here in Jamaica, Opposition Leader and President of the People’s National Party, Portia Simpson Miller, knows only too well what it means to ward off leadership challenges to survive to take the party into yet another general election.
The same could be said of the current embattled Prime Minister Bruce Golding who, having survived multiple intrigues to succeed Edward Seaga as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, is strategising to survive the politics associated with “Duduism” to remain at the helm of the party and government for another general election.
Across in Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar last January did quite well to defeat the crafty founder-leader of the United National Congress, Basdeo Panday, to assume leadership of the party.
She went on to create political history in May by becoming her country’s first woman prime minister and leader of a coalition administration.
Known as a People’s Partnership Government (PPG), some of her ministers are already publicly revealing a surprising lack of understanding of the workings of cabinet-style government and inability to manage internal dissent.
The dominant parties in Guyana, on the other hand, are currently engaged in a contest to keep their supporters as well as the rest of the country guessing as to who will be their respective presidential candidate for next year’s general election, expected a year from now.
In the meanwhile, let’s see who emerges the ‘winner’ tomorrow in Mia Mottley’s gallant bid to remain parliamentary Opposition leader and, by extension, prevent Owen Arthur from being elected later this month as the BLP’s new chairman.