Up to early yesterday, bleary-eyed political analysts were turning both to the Barbados constitution and T&T's 18-18 debacle of 2001 when it appeared possible that an unprecedented electoral tie could have been delivered by the country's electorate. Voting to elect members of a 30-seat House of Assembly, over 60 per cent of the electorate turned out at 541 polling stations from early Thursday morning.
Tensions remained high throughout the vote count which started two hours after the close of voting. By 2 am yesterday it was however clear that the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) had won by a slender majority of at least 16-13. The final seat to be formally announced, St Michael South East, had to await a re-count owing to an initial nine vote margin.
In the end, the seat was declared for the opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP), yielding a final tally of 16-14. Once he was certain, DLP leader, prime minister Freundel Stuart turned immediately to pre-election predictions of a significant BLP win saying his party had spoken during the campaign to "people" and not to "samples"–an obvious reference to pollster Peter Wickham's Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES) revised survey.
An original CADRES poll had in fact last Sunday spoken of a statistical "dead heat" but was reversed by a Tuesday release which projected an outright BLP win. In the BLP camp, former attorney general and once-deposed party leader Mia Mottley, was shortly after midnight among those bearing word of a possible "constitutional crisis." Whatever the outcome, she surmised, there would be need for both party's to re-examine their political positions.
Later, when the party's fate in opposition appeared sealed, BLP leader Owen Arthur said while he had witnessed the best mobilisation of the party since his involvement in politics, the absence of name-recognition by a high number of party newcomers facing the polls was in part responsible for the loss. "We were up against a number of factors," he said.
En route to its second consecutive loss under Arthur, the party was however able to prise the city of Bridgetown and three other significant seats from the grasp of the DLP. Wickham suggested this was indicative of a swing away from the ruling party.
In the process, Labour Minister Esther Byer Suckoo, Junior Housing Minister Patrick Todd, International Business Minister George Hutson and Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly, Kenneth Best all lost their seats. Stuart acknowledged the challenges which may have worked against his party.
"We are not governing in easy circumstances," he told supporters. "We had to govern within the context of the worst recession which the world had ever seen." Media panelists had made repeated references to T&T's 18-18 electoral tie and a possible 15-15 scenario in Barbados.
This extended T&T's presence in the elections. DLP platform speakers, in particular, referred repeatedly to growing T&T investment in the country; something they claimed would have intensified under a new BLP administration. Former agriculture minister David Estwick went as far as saying "they (Trinidadians) want to buy everything in Barbados."
DLP speakers spoke frequently about Republic Bank's majority shareholding in Barbados National Bank (BNB), the longstanding acquisition of Arawak Cement by Trinidad Cement Ltd (TCL) and the possible privatisation of state enterprises and utilities by a prospective BLP administration.
From the BLP camp, there was repeated reference to the dramatic crash of T&T-based CL Financial which, in 2011, left over 35,000 Barbadians facing millions of dollars in investment losses. In the end, discussions turned to negotiating the politics of a slender parliamentary majority and the political careers of several of the island's leading politicians.