Less than 24 hours after the election date was announced there was a flurry of activity, adding to a week of political anticipation that E-Day was at hand.
Residents Friday awoke to a host of posters plastered from pillar to post, billboards and a flood of postings on social media that ranged from the amusing to the informative.
The two major parties, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and Barbados Labour Party (BLP), held press conferences and were gearing up for celebrations this weekend.
BLP celebrations start Saturday on the island’s east coast while the DLP was in a festive mood with big plans for Sunday.
For the Bees, Saturday is all about the party’s founding father Sir Grantley Adams, whose birthday would have been today, National Heroes Day.
Party chairman George Payne has asked supporters to come out bedecked in red and, even if they can’t make it to the Ermie Bourne Highway, still wear the party’s colours wherever they may be. It is going to be an opportunity for party leader Mia Mottley and all her candidates to mix and mingle with supporters and well-wishers.
This activity follows a meeting of the elders of the Bees on Wednesday night at the Radisson Aquatica, at which some of the party’s stalwarts of yesteryear where present: Sir Henry Forde, Sir David Simmons, Dame Billie Miller, Sir Louis Tull and Aaron Truss, among others. The candidates for the upcoming poll and scores of supporters were also on hand for the session.
The Dems were not to be outdone. Their focus is on celebrating the party’s 63rd anniversary and with a special church service on Sunday at Christ The King, Rock Dundo, St Michael.
Today the Dems will be looking to lure supporters and well-wishers in numbers to their stomping ground at Independence Square, where they will hold a gospel concert in the shadow of the bust of the party’s founding father, Errol Walton Barrow.
Throughout this week the Dems have been having a series of live interviews with some of its candidates and Friday Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite was the guest speaker at the party’s luncheon lecture at its headquarters.
Later in the evening, a gala on the lawns at the party’s headquarters was another of the mix and mingle events, allowing party leader and Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who was celebrating his birthday, and the candidates to interact with supporters.
Saturday at 12:30 p.m. Solutions Barbados will be hosting a major clean-up campaign in Cleavers, St Joseph, and are encouraging residents to bring their old appliances, cars and other garbage out to be collected. Candidate Jenifer Highland will be part of the clean-up, which will include areas as far as Bathsheba, St Joseph.
None of the other parties has been staging these types of major national events, but in the case of the United Progressive Party it has been doing things at the constituency level. Spot meetings and meet-and-greets have been the focus of some of its candidates at a parochial level. (ES)
