DLP manifesto lacking vision: says Mottley
Leader of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), Mia Mottley says the Democratic Labour Party’s manifesto, which was launched Thursday night, lacks vision and she is charging that it was could not have been crafted by Barbadians.
She was speaking Thursday night at a National Meeting in Lascelles Terrace, St. Michael in the St. Michael South East constituency, where she also suggested that Barbadians should question why the DLP had not presented their manifesto to the people
sooner.
“That document did not speak of a Barbados that you and I want to relate to. That document clearly was written by somebody offshore and is only being presented tonight with less than six working days because it is a cultural necessity in our elections, for a mass based political party to present a manifesto,” she said.
Mottley added, “You really think that if Freundel Stuart believed that if this election was about two visions for the future, that the Democratic Labour Party would be waiting till less than a week to go, to present their vision and their manifesto?”
The political leader raised the question as she argued that the DLP’s document paled in comparison to that of her party, which she said will transform Barbados.
“In our manifesto I ask you to dare to dream… I tell you what we stand for, and what we will fight for and what our vision is, and we speak to the philosophical changes and the transformation we want to see in this country. We talk about new economic horizons and frontiers, we talk about building an economy that is not just based on the land, but is based on 400 times the size of the land with the ocean. We know that there are already people in this country who make their living by the sea, but we are simply saying there could be more who do it and that there could be different types of activities,” she maintained.
Her comments came as she spoke to changes in the criminal justice system under a BLP government. Mottley said that under a government she leads, there would be an end to “lick and lock for everything”. She made the point while she maintained that such an approach serves only to “hurt poor people and people at the bottom” and Mottley, a former Attorney General of Barbados, says it needs to stop.
“We say that we need a new deal for our family court, that this notion that mothers who are single mothers must go and stand up in the rain or the sun and wait for a maintenance cheque, got to stop; and if you’re married you get the right to go in the High Court in the air conditioner, got to stop. There have to be the same facilities, you cannot rule out bastardy, you cannot rule out the things that cause you to have first class and second class families and maintain a justice system that divides and literally stigmatises people who are single mothers in this country, particularly since 70 percent of the mothers in Barbados are single mothers,” she said.
The BLP Leader made the comments as she promised that a BLP government would create a Family Law Court which would be charged with looking after the interest of the children and the family. She added that such a court will work in tandem with the social service agencies in the interest of the children and family as well.
“This is a vision we are painting,” she affirmed.