Dear Owen,
The above headline seeks to capture how I think you feel about me. You have never loved me. Your public utterances about your feelings towards me were always somewhat suspect. You left the public wondering what was it you really wanted to say. I was very hurt when you said back in October last year:
“The BLP has a challenge and we have a situation where there’s not a contest for leadership within the party, but there is a problem in the wider Barbados society, where there is unacceptance and unacceptability of the present leader of the party . . . . The challenge facing Ms Mottley and the party is not within the parliamentary group.
“The challenge is to have a leader who enjoys wide acceptance and acceptability in the wider society, and wide acceptance in the parliamentary party.”
You know how I feel about October; each year I celebrate my birthday in October and yet you choose that as your annual torment month.
You have always tried to upset me on my birthday and it really hurts. I have worked in your camp from inception and never once sought to publicly betray your leadership.
Today, I am a hurt woman. I hurt as a woman because the Men In Black have cast me aside.
I feel as if you have no use for women in your life as you have all but treated my female parliamentary colleagues in much the same manner. You called my lifelong friend Elizabeth “cantankerous” and then publicly fired her. Dame Billie, the pride of the females in the Cabinet, was never taken seriously as you assigned her the role that would ensure she was never around.
To cap it off, you then placed right outside her door, the former Assistant General Secretary of the Democratic Labour Party, Kerrie Symmonds. How could you do that knowing what Kerrie say about all of us? He once referred to us as 1 000 pounds of blubber.
You dropped him on us and as a faithful steward, I complied. I know you never took Cynthia Forde seriously, so she would never have filled your eyes.
I cry at night as I lay my head down pondering on my next move. I have played the scenario over and over again and have just ended up with blanks.
It is hard to get over how our relationship has been exposed to the public but I want you to know that day runs until night catches it.
Your new-found friendships with the Men In Black, I trust, will get you through the next two years as we face the task of attracting and securing the female vote. I know that in St Andrew, my female friends are very sympathetic towards my plight and have raised some questions.
How is it that you silenced George Payne in Government and he is now speaking on your behalf?
To Dale my beloved Deputy. I am forced to ponder upon the words of Julius Caesar as the knife was driven into his body . . . et tu Brutus.
You have turned all of my male friends against me and it hurts. I was never married but I know now how it must feel to be horned.
As the French would say . . . . Amor
Yours lovingly, and party faithful former boss.
• Douglas Leopold Phillips is a pseudonym for the Democratic Labout Party.
