GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The narrowness of the election results in Barbados reflects a decision on the part of voters to keep close to the parties to which they have had allegiance. Though it also suggests that Mr Owen Arthur and his team failed to persuade the electorate at large that in the context of the recession which the country has been experiencing, the proposals which Arthur, as an experienced economic practitioner, had put forward, were no more acceptable than the Democratic Labour Party’s promise of patent more of the same.
It would seem that Barbados Labour Party Leader Owen Arthur made the assumption, or took the gamble, that the electorate was anxious to be let out of the recession in whatever way. But the voters seem to have felt that, given what is happening in other parts of the region and the world, there is no magic, or at least unorthodox, solution to the country’s current economic predicament.
The fact is, of course, that the two parties have not historically differed excessively from each other. The Barbados Labour Party, originally led by Sir Grantley Adams like other labour-oriented parties in the Region, originally took its cue from the philosophy and practice of social democracy of the British Labour Party after the Second World War. Then when Errol Barrow could no longer abide Adams’ leadership, he formed the DLP with essentially the same political philosophy and practice.