Hammilton Lashley broke ranks with Barbados Labour Party and supported the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals.

OPPOSITION MP Hamilton Lashley broke ranks with the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) yesterday and strongly supported the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals of Prime Minister David Thompson.

Amid a two-day Opposition attack on the Budget – led by BLP Leader Mia Mottley who dubbed it the poorest in the history of local politics – Lashley took a starkly contrasting stand.

"I am taking a different view!" he exclaimed, declaring that he was supporting all of the social programmes outlined by the Prime Minister.

"Some might want to accuse me of pandering to the Government but I would have to be mad as hell, to object to the social relief programmes brought to this chamber by the Government.

"There is no room on this issue of social mobilisation and nationalism for a partisan approach. There is absolutely no room. I have absolutely no problem in supporting the social programmes of this document that was brought to this honourable chamber," he added to loud applause from the Government bench.

Lashley, a former Minister of Social Transformation under the Owen Arthur Administration after formally crossing the floor on November 10, 1998 – having been made a consultant on poverty alleviation a month before – said yesterday that Barbadians, now more than at any other time in our history, had to unite as a small island against the developed world.

Telling the Lower Chamber he was endorsing the wishes of his conscience and letting it be his practical philosophical guide, the former advisor on the policy of the Millennium Development Goals stated:

"I am doing it against the background of [being] a community and social practitioner. I am enunciating a policy that I have been talking about for years, only to see them being enacted by the other side."

He added that, just like Robin Hood, the new Government had taken from the rich and given to the poor.

"I have always maintained that we must unshackle the current lethargic bureaucratic system that retards a faster delivery of service to the poor, disabled and the underprivileged in our midst.

"My conscience will not ignore that for the first time, schoolchildren will be travelling free on the Government buses, that over 400 persons residing between the Pine, Wildey and Parkinson Field no longer have to pay for their units, saving practically $400, and that poor farmers across Barbados are getting a whole plantation to plant vegetables," he said.

Lashley told the House that all of the social gains that had been made in this region and Barbados were in danger of being eroded because of the new global phenomenon.

"It is against that background that the spirit of nationalism must prevail instead of the spirit of political tribalism. That is why this particular debate, more than any point in our juncture of our history, needs a non-partisan approach. It is not Dees' issues or Bees' issues, but the ones we must deal with as a nation or perish as a nation of fools," he stressed.

In closing, Lashley urged all members to speak from their consciences.

"Speak clear and speak loud and let no obstacle be greater than the cause," he concluded. (CT)