Straight shooting: Senator Freundel Stuart charging that the BLP has been attempting to destabilise the Dems for the last 12 years. (Picture by Antonio Miller.)

Stories by WADE GIBBONS

IF THE BARBADOS LABOUR PARTY (BLP) Government has not fulfilled promises made to the country over its 12-year reign, then it has no intention of doing so.

That was the warning of Opposition Senator Freundel Stuart to Barbadians during a Democratic Labour Party (DLP) political meeting at Quakers Road, Carrington Village, St Michael, Sunday night.

"There is too much disillusionment in Barbados for it to remain a healthy society. Something has to give. This Government has lost the moral authority to govern," he said.

The St Michael South candidate said the BLP had duped Barbadians into believing that the worst thing that could have happened to them was for their salaries to be cut by eight per cent back in the early 1990s.

Stuart said workers had been promised their money back and indeed they had got it back. But, he added, Barbadians were now being deprived of something they would never get back.

He said the average Barbadian had lost the opportunity to own land because it was being priced out of his reach and ownership was being passed on to foreigners.

"I thought [late Prime Minister Tom] Adams was bad, but I had no idea that worse was to come in the form of Owen Arthur."

Stuart explained that though the BLP had won three elections, it never won the people's trust, affection or respect.

He said the Owen Arthur Administration treated Barbados as though it was just an economy and had forgotten it was a society.

He suggested a situation existed today that whenever the Government had to defend itself, it did so with the "white noise of statistics".

"Whenever you call Government to give account for health, education, labour, all it can do is to resort to statistics. Statistics are not to be believed anymore and therefore it is the personal story of individual Barbadians that is important," he said.