Wes­ley Gib­bings

Bar­ba­dos' most fol­lowed elec­tions poll­ster, Pe­ter Wick­ham, yes­ter­day was call­ing to­mor­row's gen­er­al elec­tion in favour of the op­po­si­tion Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty (BLP), in a con­test me­dia ob­servers con­clude is "tight."A poll, con­duct­ed by Wick­ham's Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices (CADRES) and pub­lished yes­ter­day by Bar­ba­dos To­day, re­vised ear­li­er find­ings in a sur­vey car­ried last Sun­day in the Bar­ba­dos Na­tion.

That poll had sig­naled a vir­tu­al dead­heat be­tween the BLP and rul­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP).T&T Guardian at­tempt­ed to reach Wick­ham yes­ter­day but was told he was en route to Grena­da where his team mon­i­tored yes­ter­day's elec­tion there. His Grena­da poll pre­dict­ed an op­po­si­tion New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP) win.

In the new vot­ers' sur­vey, con­duct­ed be­tween Feb­ru­ary 15 and 18 to cor­rect what Wick­ham de­scribed as a sta­tis­ti­cal "wob­ble" in the last set of find­ings, he pre­dict­ed the BLP will re­turn to of­fice fol­low­ing a one-term hia­tus dur­ing which leader of the rul­ing DLP, David Thomp­son, died of can­cer at the age of 48.Thomp­son's place was tak­en in 2010 by in­cum­bent prime min­is­ter and for­mer at­tor­ney-gen­er­al, Fre­un­del Stu­art.

Wick­ham is pre­dict­ing that the BLP can win be­tween 17 and 20 of the coun­try's 30 seats. The DLP cur­rent­ly holds a 20-10 ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment. The econ­o­my has dom­i­nat­ed cam­paign agen­das.Speak­ing at a ral­ly af­ter mid­night Mon­day, Stu­art con­ced­ed that the coun­try's econ­o­my had been chal­lenged by a com­bi­na­tion of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al forces.

"Our con­di­tions," he said, "are not dif­fer­ent from rich­er and big­ger coun­tries."He crit­i­cised the Owen Arthur-led BLP for sug­gest­ing that crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic is­sues could be re­solved through a sim­ple change of ad­min­is­tra­tion. He la­beled such as­ser­tions as part of a cam­paign of "de­cep­tion."The Prime Min­is­ter said if the BLP had the skills to tack­le the "eco­nom­ic may­hem" con­fronting the west­ern world, he was sur­prised the par­ty had cho­sen "to keep the an­swers to them­selves."

At a con­cur­rent ral­ly host­ed by the BLP, Arthur ac­cused the rul­ing DLP of do­ing noth­ing to ad­dress "the steepling cost of liv­ing." He said some so­lu­tions were eas­i­ly avail­able, cit­ing the as­ser­tion that the State-owned Bar­ba­dos Na­tion­al Oil Com­pa­ny was reg­is­ter­ing prof­its while it sold fu­el to the coun­try's elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny at prices which served to dri­ve rates up­ward.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had "al­lowed this com­pa­ny to gouge out your eyes."The cam­paign rhetoric of­ten strayed from is­sues of the econ­o­my to jabs about in­ter­nal squab­bling in the BLP lead­ing to Arthur's re­turn as leader of the par­ty fol­low­ing a tu­mul­tuous two-year stint by his for­mer at­tor­ney-gen­er­al, Mia Mot­t­ley.Mot­t­ley was re­moved as Op­po­si­tion Leader in 2010 fol­low­ing a no-con­fi­dence vote by her par­lia­men­tary col­leagues. The DLP has re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to the con­flict be­tween Arthur and Mot­t­ley which led to her re­moval.

How­ev­er, she has fea­tured promi­nent­ly on BLP plat­forms dur­ing the cam­paign, al­ways warm­ly greet­ed by Arthur.Stu­art is al­so be­ing re­peat­ed­ly at­tacked from the plat­form for his laid-back style. He him­self faced in­ter­nal dis­sent in late 2011 when a CADRES poll which put him as the least de­sir­able per­son with­in the par­ty's lead­er­ship to run the coun­try.There are 68 can­di­dates seek­ing the sup­port of 245,000 elec­tors in the elec­tion.