“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

This is exactly what happened when the branch of the Barbados Labour Party’s St Michael South Central constituency chose a new candidate to run against incumbent Richard Sealy of the ruling Democratic Labour Party, with an overwhelming 132 to 103 the winner is Marsha Caddle.

Ms Caddle replaces pharmacist David Gill who was MP from 1999 to 2004, he took his defeat rather poorly and cited football as the main success of his representation for that district, he also made a poor choice of referring to new cloth stitched to old cloth from the Bible and many in the audience started laughing at him. He almost didn’t get his nomination seconded until a stalwart took pity on him…

Gill overran his 10 minute allotment and they cut the mic on him, in defeat he was rancidly bitter and quoted Tony Blair when he chose to demit from elective politics in the UK. He even hinted irregularity in voting which was swiftly quelled by General Secretary Dr Jerome Walcott.

The next general elections for Barbados are constitutionally due by January 2018.

St Michael South Central has been usually considered a DLP stronghold although it changed hands briefly when the late Dr Richie Haynes formed his own short-lived National Democratic Party in 1989 which included candidates like Nalita Gajadhar, David Denny, Joseph Goddard, Trevor Prescod and Randall Rouse among others.