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Honourable Minister Willian Dugid engaged in the question and answer segment.

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Peter Wickham.

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Toni Thorne Chairperson, of the Oistins Festival Committee.

FLOW Festival lecture held

The FLOW Oistins Festival continued Wednesday night with the Sir Harold Bernard St John Memorial Lecture at the Ivan Harewood Centre.

The annual event, which was hosted under the patronage of co- founder Stella Lady St. John, attracted a varied cross section of attendees.

Among them were past and current members of parliament, parish ambassadors for Christ Church and members of their parish ambassador committee.

The evening opened with welcome remarks from Toni Thorne who shared, “This is my first year as incoming Chairman of the Festival and I’m very pleased and elated to participate in the festival. It has been for me a life-changing, life-altering experience. I have learned a lot of lessons and I have met a lot of people that I now regard as family members. Although we may have different personalities I think the common goal with everyone is that we want to bring about positive change. We want to really change and enhance the cultural landscape of Barbados.”

Political Scientist Peter Wickham was the featured speaker and he delivered an informative piece on “Politics and Polling: The Caribbean Experience.” Wickham, a veteran in the field with twenty years’ experience was thankful for the opportunity to speak in this forum. He expressed, “I don’t have many opportunities in environments like this to talk about polling, in an environment that is not really contentious.”

Throughout the course of his address he provided a brief history of polling in Barbados and throughout the Caribbean, identified significant developments and identified prospects for the future.

He asserted “I would like going forward to see us in the Caribbean and us in Barbados come back to more developmental research and more developmental polling. I would like to see us get back to these days where the University of West Indies has an institute that studies and looks into these issues.”

Wickham believes the island can benefit greatly from an institute which provides post-election analysis and post-election polling. Another point of discussion was whether there was any merit to the belief that polls had the ability to change public perception.

He admitted that while that was not originally his belief his thought process has evolved.

He indicated, “I am now convinced that a pollster can indeed influence public opinion, and this has influenced the strategy pursued in both Grenada and Barbados in 2018.”

His address was followed by a question and answer segment. Some of the participants who engaged in this segment included representatives for the Christ Church constituency, the Honourable Minister Wilfred Abrahams and the Honourable Minister William Duguid. Also among those who posed questions was Reginald Farley, the High Commissioner to Canada.

Festivities continue this weekend with a hive of family-oriented activities planned.

On Friday night there will be a Mobile Cinema with a showing of Black Panther. Saturday’s highlights include the net throwing and boat pulling competition and the greasy pole contest, which generally draws a crowd. Sunday will feature an Easter parade which includes a tea party and bonnet parade. (ST)

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