‘Unfortunate’ statement unlikely to greatly influence election: Wickham

While the comments made by former minister Delisle Bradshaw during a recent Barbados Labour Party (BLP) St. George North meeting were “unfortunate”, they will have minimum impact in drawing sympathy votes to the Democratic Labour Party (DLP).

Speaking on Sunday’s Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation’s People’s Business programme, Political Scientist Peter Wickham, in responding to a viewer’s question on whether votes would be given to the DLP’s candidate Floyd Reifer in commiseration, said this was unlikely due to the gap between the political parties in the constituency during the 2018 general election.

“You are talking about 3000 votes as a margin that has to be made up and the idea that comment could actually garner the DLP 3000 votes is something I am struggling with quite frankly,” he said.

Wickham also insisted that a signal was being sent to the political parties in how to conduct their affairs while on the political platform.

“I think the statements were unfortunate, but it is certainly not the first time unfortunate statements were made on a political platform. This now sends the signal that we are now in an age of social media. You cannot continue to run public meetings in the way that you would have run them before, because the reality is that when a statement like what Delisle Bradshaw made is made on a platform in 1976, 1986 or even 1991, those kinds of comments do not carry the kind of resonance they do. The challenge is when someone sits on the computer screen and here it replayed in an environment that is very different from the hustings of a political meeting so it sounds bad,” he said.

He added that it was such comments that hurt the former DLP administration.

“A lot of the problems the Democratic Labour Party in its 2018 general election campaign had a lot to with that kind of politicking being presented on people’s flat screen televisions and computers, but it is nothing new and I do not think it will make a difference in the outcome,” Wickham stressed. (JMB)