Elections To Win Or Lose

By Tony Best

Things haven’t gone as new Caribbean governments had expected when they took office.

Some had promised the electorate a new economic day, growth in employment and transparency in managing the economic.

But a continued slowdown in the United States and an economic nosedive in the United Kingdom have resulted in declining numbers of tourists; high energy prices are turning the balance of payments into a sea of red ink; escalating food prices are taking their toll on the pocketbooks of consumers in every country, including energy rich Trinidad and Tobago; and the new administration which have taken office in the last 18 months, from St. Lucia, Jamaica and the Bahamas to Barbados, Belize and Grenada have to contend with higher than projected deficits.

What has gone wrong?

“The global economy is the culprit, so to speak,” says Byron Blake, a former Assistant Secretary of Caricom and for years the Caribbean Community Ssecretariat’s top economist. “The result has been tough times for Governments in the Caribbean and for the people they represent. Undoubtedly, things will get tougher.”

Hence, the question: were the recent general elections which saw new Governments and leaders come to office in almost half of Caricom, elections that political parties in the opposition would have been better off losing? Asked another way, were the recent polls elections to lose?

When that question was put to David Thompson, who came to office in January after his Democratic Labor Party soundly defeated a seemingly entrenched Barbados Labor Party by 20-10 seats in parliament, he rejected the notion that the January 15th election in Barbados wasn’t the one to capture the Government.

“Political parties, we certainly in the Democratic Labor Party go into elections to win, not to lose,” he said in New York where the question was posed.

Blake, now Antigua & Barbuda’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York isn’t as sure as Thompson that the years 2007, 2008 and even 2009 were and are times to win elections?

Why?

“Given the economic climate in the Caribbean, I would imagine that those (political parties) that have lost governments are very happy, because they would look now like they were geniuses,” he told the Carib News the other day. “The truth is that the new Governments are going to come under tremendous, tremendous pressure and many of them would have made promises that they are not going to be able to fulfill, through no fault of theirs. It’s just that the circumstances have moved against the region and have moved against the world in a way that would make it tough and those who lost power are not going to make it easier for the new Governments. They are not going to ease up.”

In other words, they are going to blame the new administrations for the state of the economy in the respective countries.

“They will want to put the blame on the guys who have just come in,” said Blake. “Realistically, there is not much that the new people can do.”

But there is another school of thought on this issue and it is that if new ruling parties criticized the former Governments for everything that went wrong in prior years, then the new Prime Ministers and their cabinet ministers must also expect similar treatment now that they are in charge.

After all, argue critics and independent analysts alike, what’s good for the goose is just as good for the gander and if the political parties knew that much of what was happening at home could be traced to external economic conditions but still held the governments up to public ridicule, thereby causing a loss of public support, they shouldn’t expect a soft landing now that the tables have turned and they are n charge.

For instance, critics assert, the then opposition parties should have known that oil prices were going through the roof; that the U.S. economy was heading for a recession; inflation was galloping ahead at a quick pace; and that unemployment in all of the countries, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago would rise. Yet, they went full steam ahead and committed themselves to planks in their platforms that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to implement.

But as Dr. Denzil Douglas, St. Kitts-Nevis’ Prime Minister, who will be going later this year or in 2009 for his St. Kitts Labor Party’s fourth consecutive term in office and as Thompson in Barbados insisted, parties go into elections to win, not to lose and they do whatever it takes to gain the favor of the electorate. And once in office, they can take the necessary action to keep the political tigers at bay.

Blake contends there are some economic and political realities new Governments and their leaders must face.

And high on that list is the fact that pragmatic economic policies are required and that in turn should lead to Governments that can’t pad the public payroll with new employees.

“To hold the budget line, Governments can’t do their usual amount of employment in the public sector and in most of our cases the Government is the main employer,” he said. “Once you recognize that you are bound to have difficult times ahead.”

Even before Blake articulated his assessment of what may be ahead for the region, including Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Belize, the Bahamas and St. Lucia, countries that changed Governments, fully expecting brighter days, Standard & Poor’s, the Wall Street credit rating giant which monitors the economies of a host of Caricom countries said two things: harder days are in store for the region and the economic problems which most Governments face these days were not homemade but were imported from the U.S., the U.K. and Europe.

Exactly four weeks before the government changed in Bridgetown and several months ahead of the emergence of Dean Barrow as the new leader of Belize and at least half year before Tillman Thomas succeeded Dr. Keith Mitchell as Grenada’s Prime Minister, the Economist magazine warned that the days of “cheap food” were numbered around the world.

“Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices,” was the way it put it. But the Economist didn’t give politicians a pass.

It blamed them for creating most, if not all of the problems in the first place, especially those in the United States.

As it saw it, the rise in food prices was “self-inflicted result of American policies. Just as important, Governments and politicians could do something to solve the problems, it insisted.

 

NY CARIB NEWS HEADLINES

 

1. Jamaican And Caribbean Olympic Victories Bring “Heaven” On Earth To Caribbean Immigrants In New York, Proud To Be West Indian

2. St. Vincent & The Grenadines-Economist Lauds Consultations In Diaspora

3. Caribbean Politics-Communiqué

4. Caribbean- Four Caribbean Sates Eye Closer Political And Economic Union

5. Elections To Win Or Lose

6. Harder Times For Caribbean Economic Recession In U.S. And Slowdown In Britain And Europe Expected To Take Heavy Toll But Countries In Region Unlikely To Experience Economic Crisis

7. Tropical Storm Fay Claims Six Lives in northern Caribbean

8. Jamaica Laws Coming To Deal With Tobacco

9. Trinidad Government Urged To State Position On Death Penalty

10. Young West Indian Housewife Gets 21 Years Behind Bars for Killing Richard Huabands After Her Affair With Younger Man

11. But, As Usually Things Are Not Always What They Seem At First Glance

12. Jamaica’s First Lady On A Mission For Children

13. CACCI Prepares To Celebrate 23 Years Of Service

14. US-TERRORISM- Court Overturns Ruling In Case Of Accused In Cubana Bombing

15. St Vincent Police To Get Help From New York Counterparts