Regional pollster Peter Wickham hailed the Saint Lucia Labour Party’s landslide re-election as a landmark for labour movements across the Caribbean, even as he cautioned against direct lessons for Barbados.
The party clinched 14 of 17 seats on Monday, securing Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre’s second straight term amid a rare positive swing for an incumbent government and bucking a 25-year trend of incumbents being ousted by Saint Lucian voters after a single term. Wickham described the outcome as “an unparalleled success” that underscores growing voter confidence in SLP governance.
While he says there are limited direct lessons for Barbados coming out of Saint Lucia’s general election, regional pollster Peter Wickham has described the result as a significant moment for Labour Party politics in the region.
But in an interview with Barbados TODAY, Wickham cautioned against drawing straight comparisons with Barbados’ political landscape, stressing that each country’s circumstances remain different.
“I don’t really know that there’s a whole lot of lessons in this election for Barbados because I think our situation is a bit different,” he said. “One could argue that at this stage elections can be compartmentalised.”
Wickham noted that the outcome in Saint Lucia still carries regional significance for labour movements, particularly given the scale of the party’s victory and the historical context surrounding it.
“This is a time for Labour Party politics,” he said. “Prime Minister Pierre has a lot to be happy about as he looks at the performance of the party.”
Wickham described the result as “an unparalleled success” for the party.
He also pointed to the approximately five per cent positive swing towards the Labour Party as statistically significant, especially given that positive second-term swings are rare in the Caribbean.
“It’s happened in Jamaica, it’s happened in Barbados, it’s happened in Antigua and it’s happened in Dominica, but it doesn’t happen a lot,” he said. “The fact that it’s happened here says that people have reposed confidence in the government after one term.”
Wickham contrasted the Saint Lucia result with recent developments in neighbouring St Vincent and the Grenadines, where Labour Party fortunes followed a different trajectory in the rejection of a sixth term for the Unity Labour Party of former prime minister Ralph Gonsalves. This development underscores Wickham’s view that regional results cannot be applied wholesale across Caribbean states.
On voter turnout, Wickham said figures indicating participation in Saint Lucia at about 48 per cent should be treated with caution, as voter lists across the region remain heavily bloated.
“Those lists contain names of people who physically cannot vote,” he said. “As a result, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to speak about declining voter participation until we properly clean the lists.”
He argued that meaningful electoral reform across the region must begin with comprehensive voter re-registration exercises.
“The first thing we really need to do is proper enumeration, find out who is alive and who is not,” he said. “We may very well find that what appears to be declining participation has more to do with bloated lists than with people staying away from the polls.”
Turning to Barbados, Wickham maintained that while the Saint Lucia outcome reflects broader regional political currents, any direct electoral implications remain limited.
(SM)
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