Caribbean & Central America - September 2018 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The Democratic Labour Party (DLP), which went from government to zero representation in the House of Assembly in the 24 May general election, has begun the long haul back to political relevance by appointing a new leader: Verla De Peiza, a 46-year-old lawyer who became a DLP senator in 2012. She has twice stood unsuccessfully for the House of Assembly seat of Christ Church West.

After De Peiza’s elevation, local pollster Peter Wickham gave an upbeat assessment of the selection and her prospects, saying: “She is young in politics…[and] I think the person who leads the DLP now has to be a youthful politician…because they may have to take a lot of knocks in the years to come. And I think she can weather that storm.” Wickham’s view is that De Peiza has sufficient distance between herself and the DLP stalwarts who were so roundly dismissed by the electorate on 24 May.

Faced with a daunting task of rebuilding, De Peiza can take some comfort (in private if not in public) from the fact that the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is no more likely to find a miracle cure for Barbados’s economic ills than did the DLP. In early August, Standard & Poor’s, the international ratings agency, gave its negative verdict with a second downgrade for Barbados since the May election. The local currency rating is now Selective Default (SD), and the 2019 and 2022 Global Bonds are now marked as ‘Default’.

The downgrade stems from the government’s mini-budget in which it issued a moratorium on external debt payments and asked domestic creditors to roll over principal maturities pending a wider agreement with creditors.

One of the immediate issues for De Peiza is the need to clear away the smell of corruption from the DLP, exacerbated by the early-August arrest in the US of Donville Inniss, former minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development (2013-2018) on money-laundering charges. Of course, alleged instances of corruption during the DLP’s tenure in government are being played up by Mia Mottley’s BLP administration.

Nevertheless, although De Peiza no doubt has an enormous mountain to climb (never before has a major party in Barbados lost all of its representation in parliament), history does show that the Barbados’ electorate has a tendency – helped by the first-past-the-post voting system – to swing significantly one way and then another.

In 1986, for instance, the BLP went from government to having just three seats in the then 27-seat Assembly. Two elections later, in 1994, it returned to power with 19 representatives.

Likewise, with the DLP. In 1999 it faced near electoral wipe-out, holding just two seats. Two elections later, in 2008, it was back in power with 20 seats in the by-then 30-seat assembly.

So, large swings of fortune are far from unprecedented in the politics of Barbados, and while a return to power in 2023 for the DLP would seem to be near impossible, history would suggest that it can at least get back on the political map and then make a genuine challenge for power once again in 2028. By then, De Peiza would only be 56 and Barbados, it is not impossible to imagine, could be on the way to an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supervised recovery.