Friday, March 29, 2024

EDITORIAL: Arthur needs to explain latest move

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After a brief interlude that facilitated the success of the showpiece of our Crop Over Festival, Kadooment Day, local politics returned to the front bench of public affairs yesterday.
In a second surprising decision in under two weeks, former prime minister Owen Arthur, at the first sitting of the House of Assembly since his resignation from the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), chose to sit opposite his former party colleagues, opting rather to rub shoulders with those against whom he waged a most bitter name-calling war a short 18 months ago.
This second unprecedented action took place without prior notice and has not since been explained by either Arthur himself or any senior officer of the House of Assembly. His action will send constitutionalists checking Westminster records in search of previous examples in Africa, Asia, Canada, Australia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
Arthur’s thinking and the execution of his placement on the front bench of the Government side of the aisle however requires explanation by Arthur as well as the office of the Clerk of Parliament to the people of Barbados, such is its gravity.
As the architect of the “politics of inclusion” and indeed as designer-in-chief of the hitherto most outlandish political switch, that of the former Opposition Leader for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Clyde Mascoll joining forces with the BLP, Arthur seems to be writing his own political rule – no rules at all in politics.
If our reading of Arthur’s action is accepted, then it will inflict a lifelong blow to political credibility in Barbados and condemn every word of its practitioners to the dustbin of doubt.
The physical arrangement in the House of Assembly is for a division into two sides – those for and those against. By taking a prominent seat on the side of Government, Arthur appears to be suggesting that not only has he abandoned the party which he led for a quarter of its 75-year existence – more than any other of its leaders except its founding member and most famous son, Sir Grantley Adams – but that he is now siding with the party that he consistently persuaded Barbadians to ignore in five consecutive elections and as recently as last year.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart could not have plotted a more exciting capitulation and he and his colleagues will be emboldened by Arthur’s recent expostulations. His attacks on Opposition Leader Mia Mottley have all the marks of contempt for her politics and possibly even her personality, but have the potential to create sympathy for the first female to hold such high office in our fair land.
It is left to be seen how effectively will both Stuart and Mottley use this latest landmark action by Arthur to their political advantage all the way up to the next general elections, but Arthur has handed the DLP much with which to work and the BLP, much to fight against.
While the DLP gloats, the BLP will be required to regroup and refocus if it is to recover from this body blow inflicted from right inside by its former leader.  
Going forward, Arthur will also carry something of a burden, for he will first have to attend Parliament with more regularity than has been his recent record; and when speaking on economic matters and on the role of the Governor of the Central Bank and indeed the Minister of Finance, he will find himself having to balance his comments against some of the strongest condemnations attributed to him in his long battle to return to office since 2003.
Interesting times are ahead.

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