BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — With the announcement of a February 19 general election now made in Grenada, and Barbadians expected to go to the polls next month as well, speculation is rife that the Caribbean Community will see two one-term governments under two first-time prime ministers.

Unlike the electorate of Grenada, Barbadian voters have never restricted an incumbent party to one term in government. It would, therefore, be a historic political development should the current Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Administration of Prime Minister Freundel Stuart suffer such an inglorious political fate.

At present, Stuart maintains a stoic public posture of being unfazed over widening criticisms from political opponents and media commentators over his failure to announce the date for new general elections before January 15 — the fifth anniversary of the DLP’s return to state power in 2008 when it defeated the three-term Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Administration of then Prime Minister Owen Arthur.

Nor has he publicly betrayed any political nervousness of the electorate breaking with the tradition of giving governments a second chance, and even three terms.

Stuart, who like his Grenadian counterpart, is a lawyer by profession, became a first-time prime minister on October 23, 2010, with the death from cancer that same day of the DLP’s leader and first-time Prime Minister David Thompson.

PM Stuart’s challenge

He was successful in overcoming recurring media reports of divisions within his Cabinet and threats to his leadership, treating them with contempt. Even specific details of a circulated letter had pointed to the leading elements, among them Finance Minister Chris Sinckler, involved in critical assessment of his leadership style.

Stuart has even shown his contempt for two successive public opinion polls last year that pointed to the first-time possibility of a one-term DLP Government.

Now that the fifth anniversary of the 2008 general election has passed without an announcement, and with Grenadians preparing for February 19 as their voting day, it is felt that Stuart could well announce the election date next Monday — January 21 — which is observed as Errol Barrow Day, a national holiday in honour of the founder/leader of the DLP and ‘Father of Independence”. At the last election, the DLP scored a landslide 20-10 victory against the three-term BLP.

Grenadian scenario

Across in the Spice Isle of Grenada, the ‘wind of change’ in Government appears to be blowing even stronger against Prime Minister Tillman Thomas’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) Administration.

On the basis of private polls, the Opposition New National Party (NNP) of former three-term Prime Minister Keith Mitchell is heading back to Government with a decisive majority for the 15-member House of Representatives. At the July 2008 election, the NNP had managed to win just four of the parliamentary seats.

The NNP is understandably exploiting the serious divisions Prime Minister Thomas has been facing, both within his NDC and Cabinet, that had compelled him to leave the Grenada Parliament prorogued for a few months.

For its part, the incumbent’s strategies for a second-term victory include regurgitating some controversial cases of alleged financial corruption and political nepotism that had surfaced during the NNP’s tenure in government.

One of the current issues hitting the election campaign is a civil court matter involving the NNP’s leader and his wife and a former employee. Last November, a Brooklyn court judge issued an order for both Mitchell and his wife Marieta to appear before him this coming February 18.

That date, unboubtedly, must have influenced Prime Minister Thomas’s announcement for the February 19 general election. His NDC seems bent on making it a hot campaign issue.

But Mitchell, not surprisingly, has been playing it cool. That civil case, he said with confidence, “is not a problem” either for him or his party, and forecasts the NNP’s return to Government on February 19.

The last two one-term governments in Caricom were those of St Lucia’s United Workers Party (UWP) and Jamaica’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

In St Lucia, Prime Minister Stephenson King was defeated at the November 2011 election by Kenny Anthony’s St Lucia Labour Party, while in Jamaica, the Andrew Holness-led JLP lost the December 2011 polls to the People’s National Party led by Portia Simpson Miller.