Dear Editor,
Regarding your news report, ‘Barbados election February 21’ (SN Jan 29), I was in Barbados in late October travelling all over the island conversing with Bajans. The feeling I got at the time was that Bajans were anxiously waiting for the date of the election to be announced.
Voters wanted to make a political change. They were not pleased with rising cost of living and unemployment. I did notice new construction and the refurbishing of hotels. Yet people were grumbling everywhere. That is not good news for incumbent DLP Prime Minister Freundel Stuart.
More people preferred the BLP leader Owen Arthur than Stuart as prime minister. It appears, therefore, that the former three terms PM would make a return to office if that trend holds up.
During my travels, I also met several Guyanese who were productively employed with Bajan employers who were happy to have them because of their work ethic. In spite of all the complaints about Guyanese and other Caribbean immigrants taking jobs away from them, Bajan employers said that they can’t find good workers like Guyanese. And Bajans love roti and are glad to employ some of them to make the Guyanese delight.
Several of the construction workers I met at my resort told me that Guyanese are not trouble-makers and are not conspicuous spenders. They don’t get themselves into trouble like in other islands. They mostly stay home and have a good time rather than frequent trouble spots, as they do in other islands that I visited to study the lifestyle of the Guyanese diaspora.
With regard to voting, most Guyanese said they are not involved in the electoral politics of the island although quite a number of them are citizens. Even those who are not citizens are entitled to vote if they meet residency requirements. But the interest isn’t there. They have not expressed a preference one way or the other regarding the parties or prime ministerial candidates, although they did say economic conditions were better when Arthur was PM.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
