As Barbados goes past the halfway mark since the last general elections in the country held in 2013, concern and discussion are obviously rising among the political parties about the prospects for the current Democratic Labour Party government led by Mr Freundel Stuart when its term ends, at a maximum, in 2018.
The obvious cause for concern is the state of the Barbadian economy which has undergone a relatively prolonged period of stagnation which the DLP government did, in part, inherit, but which it appears to have been unable to come to terms with and reverse, even as it has been forced to take refuge in assistance and advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And perhaps too, the difficulties of coping have been reflected in the decline of the government’s electoral victories from a position of holding 20 of the 30 parliamentary seats in the general elections of 2008, to maintaining 16 seats in the last elections of 2013.
The government has asserted that its situation is not peculiar to Barbados, whether within the Caribbean or beyond, given that the country, like many others, has had to withstand a situation of global economic stagnation, in particular the 2007 global financial crisis; and that the latest growth figures of the economy of between 0.9% and 1.3% suggest that there has begun to be a positive response to the measures adopted under the regime of the IMF.
Harsher comments on the state of the economy, however, in August of this year, have suggested that in the first half of 2016, the economy “showed no signs of recovery”, and that “a bleak economic outlook is expected to persist”, due partly to cutbacks on public infrastructure”.
The programme undertaken by the government has been criticised by a well-known (American) specialist on Caribbean economic growth, Professor Jay Mandle, as a form of “growth without development”, a characterization once subscribed to by the economists of what was known in the region as the New World Group. But it appears to be the case that in the present era, governments have accepted (as the price of IMF financial assistance) that cuts in public expenditure as a response to prolonged periods of imbalance between revenue and expenditure, are not only necessary, but the only avenue to inflows of official financial assistance.
Commentary in Barbados is, not unexpectedly, beginning to focus on the possible effects of the implementation of the IMF programme and the results on the next general elections constitutionally due in 2018. But it cannot be said that between the two main parties, the DLP and the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), there is much contention as to the policy being presently implemented. The government has had the strong, though sometimes contentious, support of the Barbados Central Bank, led by Governor Dr Delisle Worrell (recognised as one of the country’s and the Region’s leading economists and specialists in international finance), who has taken an assertive position on the necessity for its acceptance by the government, as the only alternative to any other possible sources of assistance.
The strength of the Central Bank’s advocacy of the policy has, in a sense, shielded the government from overwhelming criticism from those not supportive of it, though it has induced some commentary on the issue of the independence of the Bank.
If we are to compare the public response to the government’s line of policy with that of the somewhat harsh response to Jamaica’s accession to the IMF in the 1970’s, it can be observed that the ferocious criticism that occurred in that country is by no means visible or audible in Barbados. But it is the case too, that in the last few years of the present century, criticism in Jamaica itself has been largely muted. And in that sense, it would appear that there has developed a regional consensus of some dimension on acceptance of the advice of the IMF, in return for its provision of financial resources, in the now recognised absence of alternative sources.
In Barbados itself, the strength, or perhaps the acuteness, of opposition intellectual resources on these matters has been partly dimmed by what has essentially been a split in the opposition Barbados Labour Party, since, as has been observed earlier, the BLP no longer has the leadership of Mr Owen Arthur. The leadership of the BLP seems, as yet, not to have normalised its own internal political arrangements, and appears, therefore, not to be able to sustain as assertive a political force in its critiques, as would be necessary to influence public opinion in any other direction.
No doubt, the leadership of the DLP government has based its political strategy, in defending its full acceptance of the IMF recommendations and financial assistance, on the obvious appearance of some degree of division and instability in the traditional ranks of the BLP led by Mia Mottley; while asserting that the success of its policies, in terms of financial stabilisation, will have demonstrated, by the time the next elections come around, that they have been the only possible course of viable action available.
