The clean sweep by the Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty (BLP) in the Jan­u­ary 19 gen­er­al elec­tion has con­tin­ued a grow­ing trend of re­cent clean-sweep elec­tions in Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries. This rais­es is­sues around the abil­i­ty of the elec­toral sys­tems to pro­duce di­vid­ed out­comes. The col­lec­tion of Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries that have pro­duced clean sweep elec­tions for one par­ty is as fol­lows:

Bar­ba­dos–2018 and 2022

Grena­da–1999, 2013 and 2018

Ja­maica–1983

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines–1989

Trinidad and To­ba­go–1971

What was a pre­dom­i­nant­ly no-vote cam­paign phe­nom­e­non in Trinidad and To­ba­go (1971) and Ja­maica (1983), has be­gun to man­i­fest it­self in more ag­gres­sive­ly con­test­ed elec­tions in the East­ern Caribbean with­in the last 30-odd years.

This is a dis­turb­ing trend for pol­i­tics in the re­gion which has de­pend­ed up­on a two-par­ty sys­tem based on a ro­ta­tion of pow­er be­tween ma­jor par­ties that have been able to ef­fect a swing in the pref­er­ences of the elec­torate from one side to an­oth­er.

Bar­ba­dos was the quin­tes­sen­tial two-par­ty state with swings of pow­er be­tween the BLP and the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP) hap­pen­ing with some fre­quen­cy since 1976. How­ev­er, the ab­solute dom­i­nance of the BLP in the last two gen­er­al elec­tions has raised ques­tions about the abil­i­ty of the DLP to re­or­gan­ise it­self in the face of elec­toral out­comes that have de­mol­ished them.

Grena­da has ex­pe­ri­enced this phe­nom­e­non on three oc­ca­sions with Kei­th Mitchell and the New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP). In small is­land states that base their con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures on a trans­plant­ed mod­i­fied ver­sion of the West­min­ster mod­el that us­es the premise of nat­ur­al di­vi­sion be­tween a Gov­ern­ment and an Op­po­si­tion, this is not healthy.

In the con­text of small-is­land states, this can ef­fec­tive­ly si­lence any op­pos­ing views in the par­lia­men­tary struc­tures if there is no Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. This phe­nom­e­non al­so man­i­fest­ed it­self in sub-na­tion­al elec­tions in To­ba­go when the PNM won all of the seats in the 2013 THA elec­tion which led to the po­si­tion of Mi­nor­i­ty Leader be­ing de­clared va­cant. The phe­nom­e­non al­most hap­pened again in the De­cem­ber 2021 THA elec­tion with the PNM win­ning one seat by three votes and the PDP win­ning the oth­er 14 seats.

One of the elec­toral re­forms that ought to be con­sid­ered, in a gen­er­al sense, to guard against these grow­ing cas­es of clean sweeps should be the in­tro­duc­tion of mixed sys­tems of elec­tion that re­tain the first-past-the-post sys­tem but in­clude a sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion for sev­er­al seats to be filled in leg­is­la­tures.

Such an ap­proach would per­mit the votes of those who vot­ed for los­ing par­ties to be guar­an­teed some rep­re­sen­ta­tion if they lose first-past-the-post seats, but their votes can be count­ed pro­por­tion­al­ly to guar­an­tee a mi­nor­i­ty pres­ence in the leg­is­la­ture to per­mit ef­fec­tive func­tion­al­i­ty in­stead of hav­ing the post of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion or Mi­nor­i­ty Leader be­ing de­clared va­cant.

Ja­maica has pro­tec­tive pro­vi­sions in this re­gard as sec­tion 81 of its con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides that the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al will act on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter if there is a va­can­cy in the of­fice of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. This pro­vi­sion per­mit­ted Prime Min­is­ter Ed­ward Sea­ga to ad­vise on the ap­point­ment of eight op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors in 1983.

Trinidad and To­ba­go had no such arrange­ment in its in­de­pen­dence con­sti­tu­tion so Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al Sir Solomon Ho­choy had to de­clare the po­si­tion of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion va­cant in 1971. The same sit­u­a­tion was fol­lowed by Pres­i­dent Richards in 2013 to de­clare the post of Mi­nor­i­ty Leader va­cant when the PNM won all the seats in the THA elec­tion.

Grena­da at­tempt­ed to in­tro­duce a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in 2016 to per­mit the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al to ap­point some­one as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in cas­es where no one was el­i­gi­ble to be ap­point­ed by virtue of elec­tion. The amend­ment was re­ject­ed by the elec­torate in the ref­er­en­dum that had to be held on it. In 2018, the NNP ef­fect­ed an­oth­er clean sweep of all the seats fol­low­ing its 2013 clean sweep.

Trinidad has in­tro­duced pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion for al­der­men in its lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions there­by re­duc­ing the num­ber of clean sweeps ex­cept in cas­es where no par­ty can get 25 per cent of the votes cast in a cor­po­ra­tion to earn a sin­gle al­der­man out of the four avail­able in each cor­po­ra­tion.

The mixed sys­tem can re­duce the fu­til­i­ty of wast­ed votes in clean sweeps of first-past-the-post elec­toral out­comes.