PM rejects claims UNC backing Barbados DLP for elections

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied claims that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is seek­ing to in­flu­ence Wednes­day’s (Feb­ru­ary 11) elec­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

The de­nial fol­lows a veiled ac­cu­sa­tion by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, who sug­gest­ed that the op­po­si­tion De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP) had adopt­ed the slo­gan “yel­low is the code,” a phrase close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the UNC.

On Feb­ru­ary 5 at a Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty (BLP) po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at Tweed­side Road in St Michael, Mot­t­ley men­tioned that DLP leader Ralph Thorne was re­cent­ly in­ter­viewed on state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT).

Mot­t­ley said, “You find your­self on Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion, TTT, telling peo­ple about yel­low. Yel­low is the code, yel­low is the code. I tell you yel­low is the curse.”

She added, “And what is that re­al­ly a code for? Is it a code for cam­paign fi­nanc­ing? Is it a code for who is sup­port­ing your par­ty fi­nan­cial­ly? Be­cause if that is the case, then Er­rol Wal­ton Bar­row (Bar­ba­dos’ first PM) should now be rolling in a wa­tery grave to be­lieve that any­body lead­ing the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Lib­er­al Par­ty would want to make that par­ty a sub­sidiary of an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty in the Caribbean.”

The DLP lo­go fea­tures a deep roy­al blue back­ground with bright yel­low/gold el­e­ments.

She said Bar­row stood shoul­der to shoul­der with for­mer T&T prime min­is­ters Dr Er­ic Williams and George Cham­bers.

“I have stood shoul­der to shoul­der with Kei­th Row­ley and the same Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar). But you can’t tell me that the Labour Par­ty is go­ing to be sub­servient to any of them. That is what Ralph Thorne is do­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who de­nied any UNC in­volve­ment in the Bar­ba­dos elec­tion cam­paign.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “We be­lieve in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. We are not sup­port­ing any par­ty, the PM said on Fri­day”

At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter said she could not of­fer fur­ther com­ment on why Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley may have ex­pressed sus­pi­cion to­ward the UNC, ex­plain­ing that she was in Par­lia­ment and could not lis­ten to ex­act­ly what Mot­t­ley said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with Bar­ry Padarath on the ac­cu­sa­tion. Ask­ing again if the UNC has any re­la­tion­ship with the DLP.

“I want to is­sue cau­tion to our Caribbean col­leagues with re­spect to us­ing that sort of in­fer­ence, be­cause the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, we have said both pub­licly and pri­vate­ly that we do not in­ter­fere in the elec­tions of any oth­er sov­er­eign na­tion. And there­fore, we hold true to that. Ob­vi­ous­ly, though, many of our par­ty colours across the Caribbean and oth­er parts of the world are quite sim­i­lar.”

It is not the first time the UNC has been ac­cused of seek­ing to in­ter­fere in a re­gion­al elec­tion.

In 2025, now for­mer St Vin­cent and the Grenadines PM Dr Ralph Gon­salves al­leged that fi­nanciers of the UNC were fund­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ty, the New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP), ahead of the No­vem­ber 27, 2025, gen­er­al elec­tions in that coun­try.

He claimed UNC op­er­a­tives were phys­i­cal­ly present in St Vin­cent, mo­ti­vat­ed by po­ten­tial ac­cess to lands and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties should the op­po­si­tion win.

Gon­za­les al­so claimed that the UNC had hired Trinida­di­an artistes to pro­vide en­ter­tain­ment-dri­ven cam­paign sup­port for the NDP. One of those al­leged artistes was John Michael Al­i­bo­cas, aka Makamil­lion, who is al­so a UNC lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor.

Guardian Me­dia asked if Al­i­bo­cas and oth­ers would be seen in Bar­ba­dos in the lead-up to the elec­tion on Wednes­day.

“Most of the per­sons you’ve spo­ken about, Or­lan­do (Oc­tave), Al­i­bo­cas, et cetera, they all came from the en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ty be­fore en­ter­ing a po­lit­i­cal stage or be­com­ing a politi­cian them­selves. And there­fore, they have every right to be able to per­form if they are hired so to do. But they do not speak or sing on be­half of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in sup­port of one po­lit­i­cal par­ty over an­oth­er in a sov­er­eign na­tion,” Padarath said.

Asked if he had any mes­sage for PM Mot­t­ley, Padarath said, “Let your heart not be trou­bled, ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter. The will of the peo­ple of Bar­ba­dos, I’m al­most cer­tain, will be done. And we re­spect the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. I re­spect the fact that Bar­ba­dos is a sov­er­eign na­tion. We have no in­ten­tion of in­ter­fer­ing in Bar­ba­dos’ elec­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ralph Thorne on the is­sue but he in­di­cat­ed that he was in a meet­ing and would re­ply soon. No re­sponse has come yet.