#tobago wicker

[vampiricallyxspeaking]

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[sgsjelfs]

Sun Room in Portland Maine Sunroom - mid-sized eclectic vinyl floor sunroom idea with no fireplace and a standard ceiling

[ericfruits]

The opposition wins every seat in the Barbados Parliament

THE tally looked like a parody of a rigged election. On May 24th the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) won three-quarters of the vote for the country’s House of Assembly—and every one of the chamber’s 30 seats. Yet no one alleged fraud when the results came out. Instead, the new prime minister, Mia Mottley, faced an unprecedented policy dilemma: how the opposition’s constitutional duties can be performed if there is no opposition in Parliament.

When voters rebuke a sitting government with so lopsided a vote, it is usually amid a dire national crisis. In Barbados, however, the electorate simply seemed to have tired of a mucky status quo—though an election-eve endorsement on Instagram from Rihanna, a pop singer and the world’s best-known Barbadian, may well have put extra wind in Ms Mottley’s sails.

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The sugar industry, once the Caribbean country’s main source of livelihood, has shrivelled, leaving Barbados almost entirely dependent on tourism. And as competing destinations have pulled ahead, the economy has slumped: GDP fell by 0.7% in the year to April. Following years of heavy borrowing, the government now spends more on interest payments than it does on its workers’ salaries, which have not risen in a decade. Trade unions, which historically joined a “social partnership” with the government and businesses to set economic policies, accused the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) of failing to listen and walked out of their talks.

The economy suffered another blow in late 2016, when local media began reporting regularly on raw sewage spouting out of manholes along the southern coast, Barbados’s main tourist area. In 2003 the government built a new sewage system there, which in theory should have improved sanitation. However, residents often use their drains as rubbish bins, depositing waste and grease that block the channels. The state water authority has not managed to clear them. Many of the system’s pumps have stopped working, and sections of the main sewer have collapsed.

In a vain effort to maintain its majority, the DLP, which has held power for the past decade, has resorted to mudslinging. At one rally, Denis Lowe, the former environment minister, called Ms Mottley a “self-proclaimed wicker”—the Bajan street-word for lesbian. The Caribbean is famous for homophobia. However, Ms Mottley’s margin of victory suggests such prejudices may be fading fast. In April a court in Trinidad and Tobago overturned laws criminalising gay sex as unconstitutional, and Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, said he would not ban homosexuals from his cabinet, as one of his predecessors did.

Ms Mottley has proposed novel plans to restructure the Barbadian public sector and attract foreign investment. Her first order of business, however, is sorting out the consequences of the BLP’s electoral sweep. The public-accounts committee, which scrutinises government spending, must be chaired by the opposition leader—a position that cannot exist in a one-party Parliament. The leader of the opposition is also tasked with nominating two of the 21 senators in the upper house, and must be consulted on judicial appointments. Ms Mottley says she will seek a constitutional amendment to resolve some of these quandaries. With a 30-0 majority, she should have no trouble getting it passed.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "A clean sweep"

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