BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Prominent attorney and former government legislator Ralph Thorne was sworn into office as the Opposition Leader on Monday, two years after he was part of the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) that swept all 30 seats in the Parliament.
Thorne, the parliamentary representative for the Christ Church South constituency, took the oath of office before President Dame Sandra Mason.
“I want to say to the public that this matter, my appointment as Leader of the Opposition, has only been completed and formalized,” he told reporters, adding, “I want to say to you while that process was ongoing, I considered that it would have been improper and inappropriate for me to have brought it into the public domain and expose it to rancorous public debate.”
“It would have been disrespectful to the Office of Her Excellency. I think it would have been discourteous to the Office of her Excellency,” he said,
Last Friday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who led the BLP to a clean sweep of all 30 seats in the January 2022 general elections, confirmed that she had received correspondence from the President indicating that Thorne, a government backbencher, had quit to become the new Opposition Leader.
This is the second successive occasion that Mottley has had to face the situation of a government legislator leaving to become the head of the opposition in the Parliament.
Following the 2018 election, when the BLP again won all 30 seats, Bishop Joseph Atherley quit and subsequently formed a new party that failed to win a seat in the 2022 general election.
Thorne made no public statement regarding his decision until Monday, but Mottley, 58, had said, “Well, these things happen, it is what is, it may be a case of easy come, easy go.”
Thorne told reporters he felt he had done the “right thing” in not encouraging a debate before being sworn into office, adding, “I would not…expose this process to public debate.”
He told reporters that “there are many an answer” regarding his decision to leave the ruling party, saying that over the last year or so, “my speeches did not always support the government.
“But still, I felt an obligation as a member of the parliamentary government to protect the government’s political interest, but it reached a point where I had a choice between blind obedience and principle objection.
‘I could not go on indefinitely trying to be diplomatic,” he said, adding, “You know that diplomacy…leads to hypocrisy…therefore, I came to a point where I had to decide that if my physiological and political views did not accord with the terms of the government,” he would have to leave.
He insisted that this was not a “personality conflict,” adding he was concerned about the situation in Barbados.
“I could not stand in a Parliament…and defend the indefensible…and I did what I had to do,” he added.
“I want to say to the government that people are objecting so violently, and when I say violently, I don’t mean physically. It is that the government has lost the people’s trust.
“People are instinctively opposing the government in the public domain…of the legislation it is bringing to Parliament from week to week,” he said, reiterating that his presentations to Parliament will be done objectively and not on personal attack “because I believe that the time has come when politics in this country must elevate itself from personal attacks.”
He said he wanted to address his constituents “having regard to the peculiar circumstances,” and leaving the BLP and the government “has not been a simple departure.
“It has been an extraction from oppressive circumstances, hostile circumstances in which I have had to negotiate a way out, and I had to do it strategically, I had to do it skillfully,” he said, noting had he gone and publicly advertised his intention “there would have been a response from the party, and everybody knows what they would have done.”
Meanwhile, political scientist Peter Wickham says Thorne’s move to the opposition benches, though not surprising, is a good one for the democratic process.
Thorne’s departure from the BLP comes at a time when the party is facing “some opposition” to the Cybercrime Bill and Labour Clauses (Concessions) Bill, and Wickham said with “a formal opposition” now in place, it will channel the resistance to the bills, that has been building in recent times.
Wickham told the online publication Barbados Today that while he has not heard Thorne speaking about the two bills, he does not believe he will take a position against the government simply because he is on the other side.
“But I think that he will probably give a reasonable response. My thing is that I am not as concerned that this demonstrates that there’s a breakup of the party [BLP] over those two pieces of legislation. Still, I think it will help us reflect on those two pieces of legislation in a slightly more mature way now, which is a national benefit, to be honest,” Wickham said.
“So, it is not the first time, and I think it will help us treat the negative concerns a lot better now that we have an Opposition Leader,” he told the publication.
The Cybercrime Bill, which repeals the Computer Misuse Act of 2005, aims to combat cybercrime, protect legitimate interests in using and developing information technologies, and facilitate cooperation with international authorities on investigating computer-related crimes and related matters.
The Mia Mottley administration is also revisiting a 71-year-old labor law to deal with the undesirable employment practices of companies executing government contracts.
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