BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley Wednesday urged the 56-member Commonwealth grouping to led by example and demonstrate that democracy, even in the most trying times, remains the fairest and most effective path to peace, prosperity, and human fulfillment.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley delivering the 68 Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference Emilia Lifaka Memorial Lecture on Wednesday (CMC Photo)Delivering the 68th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference Emilia Lifaka Memorial Lecture, Prime Minister Mottley said democracies everywhere now are under pressure, some from debt and distrust, from division amplified by digital rage and from sheer fatigue.
“Yet each week offers reminders of why we endure the arguments and why we keep repairing the house. The French crisis shows the cost of fragmentation. The recognition of a Palestinian state shows the demand for conscience in statecraft.
“You may agree. You may disagree. But the point is the same. In democracies the decision and the dissent can live under the same roof. That is why democracy remains the fairest path we have to peace and to dignity,” she said.
Mottley said it is important to work together with renewed purpose toward a future where democracy thrives, within borders and in a shared global community.
“Let us move forward hand in hand, with courage and conviction, to build a Commonwealth where democracy is not a privilege of the few, but the birthright of all,” she said, acknowledging that “this is not simply the work of government with the work of all of our citizens, and those of us will know better must guide and prepare to allow those who may not yet be awakened to this reality, the opportunity to join us in this battle that truly will determine whether we progress or whether we regress into the domination of countries and individuals by a few.
“It is against this backdrop that we address how we secure the rights and aspirations of our people within the boundaries of our nations. How we protect them from the excessive power of any executive or any parliament. How we build democracies that deliver for every resident. We know what we must do. Let us do it together.”
Mottley, who delivered the third Emilia Lifaka Memorial Lecture in honour of the late Chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) International Executive Committee and Deputy Speaker of Cameroon, said it was taking place at a time when global issues “tests both our patience and our purpose”.
She noted that in Paris this week the government changed again, and the timetable for the budget now hangs in the balance.
“A prime minister has gone as quickly as he arrived. Institutions hold, but the strain is visible. It is a reminder that democracy is not a ceremony. It is labour. It is the daily work of building trust and accepting limits on power.
“In the same span of days, France’s role in the world drew fierce debate when its president recognised a Palestinian state before the United Nations. Some applauded a moral stand. Others warned about timing, legality, and security.
“The same democratic house hosted both the decision and the dissent. That is what democracies do. They argue in public. They defend minority views. They return to the table the next morning.”
She told those attending the lecture that the purpose here today is not to romanticise democracy, but to maintain it and accept the discipline that makes freedom possible.
“I have often said there is value in a short international frame, because our Caribbean lives are not sealed off from the wider world. We live within an international rules-based order. But context must not become a cul de sac. It must lead somewhere”.
She recalled the poem by the late St. Lucian Nobel Prize winner, Derek Walcott that when you break a vase the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than the love that took its symmetry for granted.
“Our task is reassembling. So let me move from the global to the immediate. From theory to the workbench. From principles to the practice by which we keep faith with our people,” she said, adding that Barbados and the region did not inherit “perfect institutions.
“We built and are still building them. Barbados has chosen, again and again, to place strength in institutions rather than in individuals,” she said, making references to the policy decision taken by the Caribbean island to develop its democracy.
“What, then, does a healthy democracy look like in our practice. It is not a slogan. It is a system that yields predictable freedoms and predictable fairness,” she said, noting the importance of free and fair elections, the judicial system, rights and responsibilities with a civic culture that breathes and information and accountability.
“Let me ground those anchors with simple pictures. An election worker who is respected by both parties because she runs a clean register every time. A magistrate who is known for listening with patience and writing with clarity. A police officer who escorts a march he does not agree with because the marchers are his people and the law protects their voice.
“A permanent secretary who knows that the numbers in a quarterly report must match the numbers at the Treasury and that the press will ask if they do not. When these habits become normal the country breathes easier, investment flows more readily, and citizens choose confidence over cynicism.”
She said it was also important to name the things that can crack the beams.
“A failure of courts to hold executives to account. A failure of citizens to recognise their power and to use it. The reach of stronger countries into the choices of smaller ones. The climate crisis that disrupts the best made plans with a single season of rain and wind.
“A global finance system that keeps the field tilted against the vulnerable. If we pretend these pressures do not exist we will end up repairing a roof after water has already ruined the house. The discipline of maintenance is to find the leak while the rain is still falling and to fix it now.”
She said for the Caribbean, her message is simple.
“Our scale is not a weakness. It is a laboratory. We can modernise constitutions faster than continents. We can experiment with new mechanisms for judicial appointments, new charters of citizenship, new models for independent oversight that match the reality of small societies where everyone knows everyone and conflicts of interest must be managed in the open.
“Let us export not only goods and talent, but also good governance. Let our universities, our bars, our auditors, our media houses, our churches and mosques, our community organisations become the mesh that holds our democracies in shape.
“Let us accept that the applause line is not the result. The result is a school that works, a court that is fair, a police service that is trusted, a clinic that welcomes, a port that moves.”
Mottley said that people do not live inside concepts, but live inside consequences.
“They want to know that if they speak up they will not be punished. That if they go to court they can be heard. That if they vote it will count. That if they disagree with a prime minister or a party they will still have a place in the national home. “
She said this is why she often repeat the words of the late Jamaican reggae super star, Bob Marley, adding “we must see our citizens, we must hear them, and we must feel what they are going through, because he who feels it knows it”.
