Barbados Today

The Democratic Labour Party will not only win this month’s general election, but it will do so with a larger parliamentary majority.

Member of the campaign strategy team, Ronald Jones, made that prediction today as the DLP prepared to officially launch its campaign and introduce its 30 candidates tomorrow night.

“So at this stage we are comfortable, at this stage we know that the people of Barbados will return our candidates, and will add to those numbers beyond the 21 we currently have, to the House of Assembly of Barbados,” the Minister of Education said this morning during a press conference at DLP headquarters.

“This is certain knowledge and we base that knowledge not only on response but also on the fervour, which is being generated by the people themselves.

“Our two meetings, which we call meetings of reporting, were absolutely outstanding, the quality of the platform was superior to anything that we have seen being unfurled in 2008 and even now,” he added.

Jones said the party was “quite happy with what we have seen so far”, and said Barbados should not expect extravagant promises.

“We know we can’t be extravagant in what we say to our people because they know when you are fooling them, … and if we believe as politicians we can fool people and then they don’t lose respect in us then we are as politicians fooling ourselves,” he said.

“So our campaign is going to be based on sound principles, viable programmes to be executed, we are encouraging Barbadians to be part of the whole democracy that we speak about, being part of the governance models that we have.”

St. John candidate Mara Thompson, who will speak at tomorrow’s meeting, said the DLP’s campaign reflected some of her core values.

“This campaign has been built on a pillar of decent politics. Our focus will be pointing the way forward in these trying times and we have paid little attention to the distractions from the other side,” she said.

“We want the voters in this campaign to appreciate that campaigns are about communication and that a battle for their minds is on. (SC)