Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland is standing by a senior Canadian diplomat accused of interfering in another country’s election.
Canadian High Commissioner to Barbados Marie Legault raised the ire of Barbadian education minister Ronald Jones, who said in fiery terms Tuesday she should be recalled to Canada for suggesting the country is ready for a female prime minister — and, in his view, implying that citizens should vote for a change in government.
Opposition leader Mia Mottley, of the Barbados Labour Party, is soon to challenge incumbent prime minister Freundel Stuart of the Democratic Labour Party. The country’s parliament dissolved last week but an election date hasn’t yet been set.
Legault was “in no way endorsing any candidate in their upcoming election,” said Adam Austen, a spokesman for Freeland. “On the contrary, she was (speaking) to Canada’s well-established feminist foreign policy as the keynote speaker at an event highlighting gender issues in the Caribbean on International Women’s Day. Canada is proud to support the greater participation of women in all spheres, including politics and government, around the world.”
Legault, a career diplomat, outlined percentages of women in the legislatures of other Caribbean countries during her address at an event last week and said, “I think every country is ready for a male or female prime minister. Gender does not have an impact.”
Legault was responding to comments earlier this year from a political scientist, Maureen Holder, who questioned whether Barbados was ready for a female prime minister or not. According to reports, Holder raised this question while speaking at the headquarters of the DLP, the party in power.
“Has this nation given (a female prime minister) any serious thought, or is it a case that people are so fed up with the DLP that they feel they have no other choice but to accept the next best alternative?” Holder said in January.
In response, Jones reportedly told a room of DLP supporters in the capital, Bridgetown that while he likes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “I ain’t going up there and tell anybody to vote for he.”
Legault was not the only Barbados resident to weigh in on those comments. A female senator who attended the meeting was quoted saying she firmly believes Barbados is ready for a female prime minister, but maybe Holder meant “not this particular female.”
A Barbados newspaper editorial concluded that a public debate on the issue “would not only be embarrassing to us as a developing nation that is wedded in constitutionality to the equality of the sexes but also wasteful, given the imminence of a general election where one of the main parties in the contest is led by a woman.”
Still, Jones rebuked Legault in no uncertain terms. “To think that you can come into my country and because you want to cuddle and cunoodle (sic), you want to have nostrils clean or clear, you say to the people of Barbados to vote for that person. How dare you?” he reportedly said of Legault. “You should be asked to leave or your government should tell you to come home because you have interfered in the domestic political affairs of Barbados.”
He went on: “But I become seriously offended when somehow your garters pop, everything expose and in a demonstration of your proclivities and because you are functioning with some knowledge that I don’t have, you decide to make certain utterances. … Get out!”
Jones ended his criticisms by suggesting that Canadians may eat muskrats, but this doesn’t mean they should come down to Barbados and tell them to eat rats.
