On Sunday night, May 6, the ruling Democratic Labor Party (DLP) launched its campaign for the May 24 general election, brushing aside the “promises” made by its main opponent, the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) at its own launch 24 hour earlier.
DLP leader Freundel Stuart told supporters that he was “very pleased about the level of optimism that I have seen from the audience here tonight …and as St. Paul said, the day is at hand and we must therefore criticize the work of darkness and put on the armor of light.
“I just want to say to you as you go through this campaign, remember the works of darkness can be found in the Barbados Labor Party but the armor of light is to be found in the Democratic Labor Party and therefore vote DEMS on May 24”
Election will be decided on leadership
Stuart, who is leading the DLP into a second general election, last week reminded reporters that since 1961 all the elections here were fought on leadership, and he took that message to the platform on Sunday night, launching a blistering attack on the BLP leader, Mia Mottley, who he said was approaching the office of Prime Minister with a sense of “entitlement”.
Nothing to do with bloodlines
The Prime Minister told the crowd that leadership had absolutely nothing to do with bloodlines and referred to a situation several years ago when Mottley was appointed attorney general.
He said her then predecessor had made no reference to her “capacity for hard work, he did not say her intellect, none of those criteria at all, did he mention.”
Stuart said while he would not go into explaining what bloodline is, but there’s no one in Barbados “who can say because of who my father is, because of who my mother is, because of whom my grandparents are…I am entitled now, not only to the future, to opportunities for higher achievements that have no bounds or limits.”
Mottley on Saturday, at the launch of the BLP campaign under the theme “Lift Off”, said issues related to transportation, problems plaguing the South Coast Sewerage Project, pension increase for public workers, and free tertiary education would be solved immediately should her party win at the polls.
Meanwhile, on Monday, the political candidates filed their nomination papers.
In the last general election, the DLP won 16 of the 30 seats with the remainder going to the BLP.
 launched its campaign for the May 24 general election, brushing aside the “promises” made by its main opponent, the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) at its own launch 24 hour earlier.){kind=link}