Say no votes for sale, implores Archdeacon

Say no! That’s the advice a senior member of the local Anglican Diocese is telling Barbadians should be their answer, should anyone seek to buy their vote in the May 24 election.

Archdeacon of the Anglican Church and Chaplain of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), Eric Lynch, offered the advice as he delivered the sermon on Sunday evening at Solidarity House for the annual May Day Service.

Before an audience that included Governor General Dame Sandra Mason; Minister of Labour, Social Security and Human Resource Development, Dr. Esther Byer Suckoo and former Barbados Labour Party Members of Parliament, Cynthia Forde and Dwight Sutherland, Archdeacon Lynch encouraged those present that as they look to the future, to remember the importance of God to that future. With that in mind, he contended that the selling of votes to any politician would be displeasing and disrespectful to God.

“You were bought with a price, a price paid in Christ’s own blood; no vote selling by any of you. Rather consider those who would present themselves and their manifestos carefully, using critical thinking with which the Lord has blessed you and consider whom you will vote for, and please vote. The inducement must be to do God’s will as you understand that will, but there must be no vote buying if they offer,” he said.

Lynch added, “We were bought with the price of Christ’s own blood and we are not for sale!”

The Archdeacon as he reflected on the period of slavery, noted that those days are long gone in this country were persons were bought, and likening such to vote buying, reemphasised that no person who has reached the age of enfranchisement should sell their vote.

“Our brothers and our sisters were for sale not far from here, beside St. Mary’s Church. Jubilee Gardens which was a centre of commercial activity for the entire West Hemisphere, that’s how important Barbados was, [but] not again, not again my brothers and sisters,” he contended. (JRT)