You win some, you lose some.
That’s what happens in general elections, former Prime Minister Freundel Stuart reminded his listeners at a Democratic Labour Party (DLP) political meeting recently.
He was speaking at a St Michael South East meeting, hosted by former candidate Pedro Shepherd who is acting general secretary of the party, held at the Parkinson Memorial Secondary School.
“There is nothing exceptional about losing an election. It happens. This is the process,” he said.
Stuart was Prime Minister and president of the DLP in 2018 when the party suffered the first of successive 30-0 defeats to the Barbados Labour Party at the polls. Recently, he referred to the second 30-0 loss as a “mock election” but that there was nothing strange about losing elections.
“But for some strange reason, after 2018 I was getting the impression that something unprecedented had happened in Barbados, and that the DLP should be ashamed, we should all walk around in a state of dazed disorientation, and that we should be ashamed to look in anybody’s face. That was the version of ourselves we were being asked to accept, and that a lot of us accepted.”
According to Stuart, a high level of gas-lighting had led to many DLP supporters succumbing to the thought that they should feel ashamed about losing 30-0.
Stuart noted that 14 general elections were held between the establishment of universal adult suffrage in Barbados in 1951 and the last DLP victory at the polls in 2013.
“When we won the 2013 election, of the 14 elections held, the Democratic Labour party had won seven, or 50 per cent, and the Barbados Labour Party had won seven, also 50 per cent. So there was no superiority there or any inferiority,” he told the meeting.
Stuart added that it was important to remember that as of 2018 when the DLP was 63 years old, 33 years of that period had been spent with the party holding the reins of Government in Barbados. “More than half,” he said to applause.
“What about a record like that should anybody be ashamed of? You can’t want for a more impressive record than that,” he boasted.
He said that based on that exemplary record, the DLP still had plenty to offer.
“We need to get back to the best version of ourselves. We have not been relating to the real version of ourselves. We need to get back to being the real Democratic Labour Party that spent 33 years of its existence in Government and that won seven elections,” the former St Michael South Member of Parliament recommended.
He noted that the version of the DLP he asked party members to return to was one highlighted by the hard work and commitment of its founding members.
Stuart said it was a deviation from the DLP’s founding principles which had led to “interpersonal strife” now being seen within the party.
