LESSONS OF HISTORY

The 12-4 defeat in Tuesday’s Antigua and Barbuda General Election of the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP), led by former Prime Minister Lester Bird, marked the end of the 58-year virtual domination of Antigua’s politics by the Bird dynasty and gave the country a new Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer. It was a domination which had been briefly interrupted in the 1970s, when the Progressive Labour Movement headed by George Walter in 1971 defeated the ALP then led by former Prime Minister Vere Bird, father of Lester Bird, charging State corruption. It was the same accusation levelled again this time around by the victorious United Progressive Party. Ironically, the Progressive Labour Party had been a one term Government itself booted out of Office following on charges of corruption.

The Lester Bird Government had tarried on acting on charges of untoward behaviour, including State corruption, not unlike the situation in Trinidad and Tobago with respect to the former United National Congress Administration. The former Antigua Government stubbornly refused to learn from the lessons of relatively recent Trinidad and Tobago history. Three ALP Parliamentarians left the Party in disgust to protest a decision neither to have a debate on allegations of corruption nor to allow a vote of no confidence in the Administration. In an earlier unrelated development, former Prime Minister Lester Bird had the ministerial appointment of Attorney General, Errol Cort, revoked, a decision which would return to haunt him politically on Tuesday when Cort defeated him. Cort has been appointed Finance Minister in the new Spencer Government of Antigua and Barbuda.

Political scandal had troubled several ALP Governments. In the second half of the 1970s Lester Bird had been implicated in a US Federal grand jury investigation as the principal factor for Antigua being reportedly used as a conduit for shipments of US artillery to South Africa’s then apartheid Government. In 1989 the former PM’s brother, Vere Bird Jr, was accused of shipping arms to the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia, but was never prosecuted. Only last weekend accusations were made that boxes containing “incriminating documents” had been removed from the PM’s office. Even as new Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer called for “healing and reconciliation” he warned, nonetheless, that “crimes committed against the people must be punished.” His country and the region will have to wait, however, to see whether he will follow the lead of the Patrick Manning Administration and appoint Commissions of Inquiry into allegations of corruption.

Meanwhile, Lester Bird, who is the last of three Caribbean Prime Ministers whose fathers were also PMs, has become the first to have been voted out of Office. The others were Michael Manley, who like his father, Norman Manley was Prime Minister of Jamaica, and Tom Adams, whose father, Grantley Adams, was before him Prime Minister of Barbados. Michael Manley resigned as Prime Minister, while Tom Adams died in Office.