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Head of the Police Sciences Department at UWI St Augustine, Dr Bishnu Ragoonath, says while it was widely expected that Mia Mottley would have won the Barbados election, nobody expected a clean sweep.
“I thought that some of the incumbents would have retained their seats,” Ragoonath told the T&T Guardian yesterday.
He said the election “excited people so much that I would use the example of Wednesday when one student left Trinidad to ensure he got back to Barbados to vote, to ensure that he removed the government.”
Ragoonath said a decision by the election commission to deny Commonwealth citizens the right to vote also had a response.
“In fact, several of my colleagues at the university registered just to vote against the government. I know for a fact several Caribbean colleagues who were at Cavehill, so clearly, there was that movement away from the Stuart regime.”
Describing Mottley as “an astute politician,” Ragoonath believes she will bring to the fore “issues relating to good governance in the region. I think that’s what people are looking for.”
While Mottley follows in the footsteps of former female prime ministers in the region, when the 13-nation Caricom group meets she will be the sole female Prime Minister. When Kamla Persad-Bissessar was prime minister she was in the company of Jamaica’s Portia Simpson Miller at Caricom.
Barbadian political analyst Peter Wickham meanwhile said reversing the rapid decline in foreign reserves will be one of her main jobs. Those reserves now stand at 3-4 weeks, but Wickham the norm “is twelve weeks.” It is “difficult for anyone who is honest not to admit we in a mess,” he said.
Come June, Mottley has to deal with a major debt problem of several million dollars and Wickham said: “Our assumption is an approach to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be high on the list of priorities, because we not in a position to meet those payments in June.”
Wickham said Barbadians are well aware of how bad things are in the country. He said he believes that had the Freundel Stuart government approached the IMF in 2013, “we would have been out of this mess now. Grenada did it and Grenada is on the way to growth.”
Wickham said there are great expectations among Barbadians for the new Prime Minister.
“Her track record as an MP has been impressive. We are excited to see her take control.”
Wickham said he had done some polling on the election and was not surprised at the outcome.
“We knew the direction the polls were going,” he said.
He said Stuart had narrowly won the last election and Barbadians “were waiting.”
“They have dismissed him with a force we have not seen before in Barbados.”