Not for the first time, the Bar­ba­di­an elec­torate has, on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2026, re­turned Mia Mot­t­ley and her Bar­ba­di­an Labour Par­ty to gov­ern­ment with all 30 seats in the House of As­sem­bly. May 2018 was the first time she was giv­en a clean sweep, fol­lowed three and a half years lat­er by the snap elec­tion of Jan­u­ary 2022, and 2026 was the sec­ond time she was be­ing giv­en a clean sweep af­ter an ab­bre­vi­at­ed term in of­fice.

In 2022, I was not clear why, with full con­trol of the House, she was seek­ing a new man­date. And in 2026, I am still not clear. Giv­en her un­de­ni­able pop­u­lar­i­ty, why didn’t, or is it ‘couldn’t’?, she wait, both then and now?

The econ­o­my had clear­ly crashed un­der Fre­un­del Stu­art when she took over, and, by most ac­counts, it had per­formed well enough in her first term. Things had al­so gone well in her sec­ond term—by her own ac­count.

In fram­ing her pro­pos­al to the elec­torate, she de­clared as fol­lows: “I need for us to unite around a com­mon cause, unite be­hind a sin­gle gov­ern­ment, unite be­hind a sin­gle leader ...” From all ap­pear­ances, there was dis­sent in the ranks which threat­ened to un­der­mine the free hand she want­ed. So, as po­lit­i­cal leader, she want­ed uni­ty around a com­mon cause and be­hind one gov­ern­ment and leader, which she could on­ly achieve through cleans­ing the par­lia­ment of some of its more un­co­op­er­a­tive par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

So we must ask if she achieved the uni­ty which she had sought through the 30-zip land­slide.

She cer­tain­ly pros­e­cut­ed a full cam­paign of is­sues (promis­es kept and pro­pos­als in a new vi­sion) if we are to be­lieve DeepSeek. Here are some key ones:

• Eco­nom­ic Man­age­ment and Fis­cal Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (as re­flect­ed in a $148 mil­lion fis­cal sur­plus and 18 con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of growth.

• Cost-of-Liv­ing Sup­port, through pledges like:

— Bar­ba­dos Re­pub­lic Child Wealth Fund: A $5,000 gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment for every child born on or af­ter No­vem­ber 30, 2021.

— Tax Cred­its: Ex­pand­ed re­verse tax cred­its and an in­creased tax-free al­lowance for pen­sion­ers.

— Cash Sup­port: Cost-of-liv­ing cash sup­port for pen­sion­ers and vul­ner­a­ble groups.

—Strength­en­ing On­go­ing In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Works.

— Progress on Lo­cal Is­sues, such as the wa­ter chal­lenges in St Lucy.

— Mot­t­ley’s Lead­er­ship on Cli­mate Change and Glob­al Lead­er­ship.

In short, the cam­paign was a mix of “promis­es kept” and new pro­pos­als for the fu­ture, ask­ing vot­ers for a man­date to com­plete the “mis­sion trans­for­ma­tion” of the coun­try, and the new man­date was grant­ed.

There’s clear­ly a lot of meat there, and some progress in the man­age­ment of the econ­o­my. But there is still a great deal of opac­i­ty in the de­sire for a clean sweep in or­der to fix the econ­o­my and ‘com­plete the “mis­sion” trans­for­ma­tion’ be­gun in 2018. Fur­ther, there is still time to over­haul the gov­er­nance process to struc­tural­ly in­volve the peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly in the pro­vi­sion of over­sight of the work of the ex­ec­u­tive. But Mia is very much the au­thor­i­tar­i­an. She wants to rule with ab­solute pow­er. Frus­trat­ing. Dis­ap­point­ing.

With all those elec­toral rich­es—full, un­hin­dered land­slides in the par­lia­ment from 2018 to 2022 and from 2022 to 2026—Mia had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­shape the gov­er­nance process to cre­ate over­sight struc­tures com­prised of ex­perts, CBOs, and some of the 30 elect­ed As­sem­bly­men, but squan­dered it. And it ap­pears that she will squan­der this lat­est set of rich­es, too.

The prob­lem is not the Op­po­si­tion be­cause the elec­torate has moved them out. It is most de­cid­ed­ly a lack of aware­ness of the con­di­tion all of our is­land states are stuck in. Many of our ac­tu­al and would-be lead­ers mis­guid­ed­ly think we can gov­ern our coun­tries with on­ly half of them and leave the oth­er half be­hind.

Mia has se­cured a third land­slide. She should use it in part to over­haul a gov­er­nance process that is too long in the tooth. It is time to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment over­sight struc­tures to mod­er­ate our ex­ec­u­tives. The rest of us will fol­low.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com