“In spite of our size we believe that Barbados must be able to speak to create a better world.”

• Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley

Since her first electoral sweep in 2018, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has engaged her country of approximately 290,000 in a sustained dialogue on democratic modernization and reform of the eastern Caribbean nation.

The 56-year-old London School of Economics-trained graduate’s passion for reform is fuelled by a fierce commitment to social justice and an equally fierce intellect.

It is an intellect bolstered by an expansive depth of knowledge, including of the most pressing global issues such as climate change and economic arrangements that disadvantage smaller and developing nations.

Ms Mottley is deeply committed to the ongoing struggle for economic and social equality, ensuring opportunity and the rights of vulnerable and marginalized populations ranging from LGBTQ communities to migrants.

She has a deep understanding of how colonial and imperial mindsets still pervade the consciousness of former colonizers and the formerly colonized, still operating, often mindlessly, from master narratives – pun intended – which are difficult to exorcise and root out.

In an interview with the Financial Times following the recent general election, Mottley stressed that given its history as a British slave colony, Barbados had a responsibility to provide “moral strategic leadership” on the global stage.

“The parliament I belong to is the same parliament that passed the 1661 Slave Code,’ Mottley said, referring to the first law in the Americas to provide a legal basis for slavery. “In the same way that we are ashamed by it we ought to be moved to put forward to the rest of the world a more humanizing condition for migrants.”

She emphasised: “The world continues to be framed very much in a colonial structure and a colonial framework as established in 1945 with the Bretton Woods institutions.”

Deep problems

We should not romanticise nor idealise Ms Mottley or Barbados. The country has deep structural problems, with past leaders leaving the country in an economic and infrastructural mess. There are lessons Barbados may learn from The Bahamas.

Moreover, a friend with deep knowledge of Barbados argues The Bahamas enjoys strategic advantages which Ms Mottley and Barbados would relish. Still, there are lessons for The Bahamas from Barbados and the reformist course on which Ms Motley has decisively embarked.

In the 2020 Speech from the Throne delivered by then-Governor General Dame Sandra Mason, the Mottley administration noted and advised: “Barbados’ first Prime Minister, the Rt Excellent Errol Walton Barrow, cautioned against loitering on colonial premises. That warning is as relevant today as it was in 1966. Having attained Independence over half a century ago, our country can be in no doubt about its capacity for self-governance.

“The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind. Barbadians want a Barbadian Head of State. This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving.

“Hence, Barbados will take the next logical step toward full sovereignty and become a Republic by the time we celebrate our 55th Anniversary of Independence.”

Last year, Barbados became a republic with its own Head of State. Here at home, we are not simply “loitering on colonial premises”. We are voluntarily self-tethered on those premises, unable to have a genuine and dynamic national dialogue on becoming a republic.

We also lack self-confidence on a number of levels. By example, many believe that we must remain tied to the Privy Council as a last court of adjudication, instead of joining the Caribbean Court of Justice, a regional body with many distinguished jurists.

Many have brought into the narrative that we must remain with the Privy Council because the international financial community would not have confidence in an adjudication by our Court of Appeal or a Caribbean court, and that we require a court in the United Kingdom to approve the judgments of Caribbean jurists.

Racialist

This is part of a racialist mindset that we need white foreigners in the colonial metropole to check the homework of mostly black judges in our region. What makes this more glaring is the Privy Council would have no problem with The Bahamas removing the Council as our final court of appeal.

A report by Kyrstel Rolle in The Nassau Guardian from 2011 noted the views of then-Chief Justice Sir Michael Barnett, who is now President of the Court of Appeal, and one of our finest judicial intellects and jurists: “Chief Justice Sir Michael Barnett said … The Bahamas should eventually abandon the Privy Council as the final court of appeal and move toward the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

“While that decision would be up to the government of The Bahamas, Sir Michael said there is a ‘powerful argument to moving eventually toward the CCJ’.”

Sir Michael stated: “Whether we do that now is a matter for political debate and a matter that [the government] will have to discuss and consider…

“I have my own views and I think it’s almost a natural progression of our constitutional development that we move away from the Privy Council and I think the Caribbean Court of Justice is likely to be the alternative to the Privy Council.

“I think that as a part of our constitutional development it’s almost inevitable that we move away from the Privy Council like lots of other countries, including Australia and New Zealand.”

He also noted: “It’s a regional court but it’s also part of our development as a nation that we look to our own court for the resolution of disputes.”

Reform

The movement for reform and modernisation in Barbados is based on a democratic equation: a certain quality of political leadership and a generally politically mature public capable of engaging in a reasonable and intelligible dialogue on the merits of a proposition, namely, “Should Barbados become a republic?”

There was also a certain level of intellectual maturity and depth by the opinion makers, media commentators and the educated in Barbadian society.

Is it possible to have a substantive and politically mature national dialogue on becoming a republic, especially given the mostly puerile debates we have had on full constitutional equality for women?

There is little to no interest by the political directorate for moving The Bahamas toward republic status. This includes leaders who prefer us to retain the British monarch as Head of State and those who believe it would be political suicide to argue for such reform in our politically conservative society.

In Barbados, around the Caribbean and in The Bahamas, some of those opposed to Barbados and their respective countries becoming republics, stated Ms Mottley was acting undemocratically.

One comment in a local journal even went as far as to foolishly and ignorantly state: “Barbados is hardly a democratic republic.”

The people of Barbados responded to the naysayers, giving Mottley a historic second landslide election victory, with her centre-left Barbados Labour Party (BLP) winning all 30 seats in the House of Assembly.

The morning after her victory Mottley declared: “But we are equally conscious that it comes very rarely to a generation to change the pattern of history and to transform a nation.

“In a very real sense, we felt – as we told you in 2018 – that we had been existing on the fumes of the independence generation rather than seeking to carry this nation forward and to release the opportunities that are so obviously available, particularly to Barbadians and young Barbadians.”

Ms Mottley is a pragmatist, with a clear economic vision for her country. She has secured financing for infrastructure projects from various countries including China. She notes that she shares the vision of Errol Barrow, the country’s first leader following independence in 1966, that Barbados would be “friends of all and satellites of none”.

She noted to the Financial Times: “We welcome all investment, [as long as] it does not crowd out domestic ownership and investment. We need access to foreign capital and investment but . . . it must not be at the expense of our people such that our people become tenants on their own land.”

Ms Mottley has called for a Caribbean Marshall Plan and reparations to address the “economic decline” faced by the region because of the devastation caused by COVID-19 and the economic and social inequalities from our colonial and slave history which continue to retard development.

Such a plan is a reference to the recovery plan for Western Europe after World War II, named for then-US Secretary of State George Marshall.

She made her plea at a meeting organized by the Caricom Reparations Commission established in 2013 by the body’s heads of government, “to pursue reparations from the former slave-holding and colonizing countries in Europe.” The Bahamas is a member of the Commission.

Mottley stated: “I do believe we must make the argument that a combination of the validity of the reparations argument, the evidence that clearly shows there was no bank account left with us at the point of independence, there was no development compact and, yet, there is a legitimate expectation by our people that independent governments would right the wrongs of the past and would do so quickly by giving people opportunity in this part of the world.”

Ms Mottley pledged to serve only two terms. Given her majority, force of personality, clarity of vision, popular appeal and five years to realize more reforms, the region will witness an extraordinary experiment in democracy.

Prime Minister Mottley cannot take anything for granted. Some of her reforms may stall. The public could lose an appetite for change or balk at certain reforms. She has already seen off internal challenges within the BLP, but more could come. And there will be the inevitable mistakes and setbacks.

But if she is generally successful, Ms Mottley will push Barbados more decisively into the 21st century, helping to modernize and reform her country, improving its quality of life and self-understanding, and reawakening its national consciousness.

After 55 years a sovereign nation, Ms Mottley is determined to re-purpose Barbados, “to carry [her] nation forward and to release the opportunities that are so obviously available.”

And where will The Bahamas be at this point? Will we still be lazily, happily, insouciantly loitering on colonial premises? Or will we have discovered more self-confidence?