Latinnews Archive

Caribbean & Central America - 30 September 1993

Bird brothers take top ALP posts; LESTER THE LEADER-ELECT, VERE THE NEW PARTY CHAIRMAN

His leadership style would be 'creative, visionary, firm, disciplined and in the interest of the people of this country,' planning minister Lester Bird said following his election as the next leader of the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP) at its annual convention in early September.

With former trade minister Hugh Marshall forced to drop out a few days before the internal election because, the then ALP chairman Adolphus Freeland explained, his nomination was not seconded, the leadership contest was a straight fight between Lester Bird and information minister John St Luce. Bird and St Luce had received the same number of votes, 150 each, at a special convention in May last year, after Prime Minister Vere Bird announced that he would not be contesting the next general elections, due by April 1994 (RC-92-05). This time around, Bird beat St Luce by 169 votes to 131.


Freeland, the health and labour minister who was elected chairman at last year's special convention, was unsuccessful in his bid for re-election, being defeated, by 166 votes to 132, by former public works minister Vere Bird Jr, whose challenge for the chairmanship was promoted by his brother Lester.

Relations between the two brothers were tense in early 1990, when Lester Bird called for a judicial inquiry into Vere Bird Jr's alleged involvement in a shipment of Israeli-made arms to Colombia's Medellin drugs cartel (RC-90-04, 06). British jurist Louis Blom-Cooper, who conducted the inquiry and recommended that Bird Jr be barred for life from holding any public office -- the prime minister finally agreed and acted accordingly late that year (RC-90-10) -- described him as 'a thoroughly unprincipled man'.

* Healing past wounds

Vere Bird Jr, who has said that his election as ALP chairman is a 'vindication' of his position vis-a-vis the charges of corruption levelled against him in the past, has said his priority will be 'to weld the party together (. . .) to get closer ties with the Antigua Trades and Labour Union (AT&LU) and to make certain we set up the machinery which will ensure that we win the next elections.'

ALP leader-elect Lester Bird -- he is expected to take over from his father early next year -- has said he intends to work with all his colleagues in an effort to heal long-running divisions within the party. 'I am going to make sure once again the Labour Party is a cohesive unit so we can go forward and fight the elections.'

* Dominance spells trouble

Opposition politicians and other critics have warned that the continued dominance of the Bird family spells trouble for the ALP and the country.

'They (the delegates at the ALP convention) have voted for the Birds and in so doing have voted for continued corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement,' Bruce Goodwin, president of the Small Business Association and chairman of The Land and Freedom Movement, a recently formed political grouping comprising mainly businessmen and small farmers, he noted. 'The effect will be seething apathy on the part of the electorate,' who must now know that 'Birdism is too deeply entrenched to be removed by fair means.'


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