FORMER MINISTER of Social Transformation Hamilton Lashley was like the proverbial sacrificial lamb on the altar of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP).

Opposition Leader David Thompson said yesterday at a Press conference at the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) headquarters in George Street, Belleville, St Michael, that Lashley's "shelf life was over".

"His expiration date was passed very regrettably and he is no longer of any benefit to this Government (BLP)," Thompson said.

He reminded that he had long forecast the St Michael South East MP's exit from the BLP when he said after the DLP's annual conference in August, that attempts would be made to make Lashley "a scapegoat".

"He was to become the face of Government's infelicities so that once you had moved him away, it would seek to, in the public perception, remove some of the concerns about Government's infelicities and that is precisely what has occurred.

"Perhaps it is a statement that reflects on Mr Arthur's approach to politics because he made very heavy weather just a few weeks ago about the so-called people who were born into poverty who he had elevated to prominent positions and that the Democratic Labour Party was not able to accommodate them.

"It is a pity that Mr Lashley has been sacrificed in this way particularly as he was a person who was a symbol of somebody rising out of difficult economic circumstances and being able to make a national contribution," Thompson said.

About former Attorney-General Mia Mottley's shuffle to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Development, the Opposition Leader said ministers of state or ministers under the Minister of Finance exercised very little responsibility.

"They are basically part of what you might call a filtering process, but the buck stops at the desk of the Minister of Finance and perhaps that decision to move Miss Mottley was more strategic for his own assessment of what he (Arthur) needs to do to reassert himself in the opinion polls than it was to carry out the National Strategic Plan as promised," Thompson said.

The DLP had called repeatedly for former Minister of Housing Elizabeth Thompson
and former Minister of Education Reginald Farley to be moved.

And with their shift to the Ministries of Energy and Environment and Housing and Lands respectively, Thompson praised his shadow Minister of Housing, St Philip North MP Michael Lashley, and the hard work of the parliamentary group.

He said it was Lashley's consistence in identifying all of the challenges that existed and the fact that he was able to "unmask the minister's rhetoric and all the pretty talk about all these houses that would be available by Christmas", and the problems with contracts in the Ministry of Housing, as a tribute.

About the Farley move, he said: "I think that it would be very difficult for a Minister of Education to continue in that ministry where he is arguing that a school should remain open but when he was teaching at it recommended that it should be closed. He painted himself into a corner from which he could not escape." (DS)