Updated: Our 2 Millionth Visitor Is From Switzerland

Update

Our 2 Millionth visitor to Barbados Free Press is from Switzerland (Brrrrrr… cold!). They visited us on January 1, 2008, 21:44:36 hours GMT from “American Express Bank (Switzerland) SA”

As we see time and time again, everywhere you go you find Bajans. Such a tiny island, yet our brothers and sisters are all over the world.

So hello to our friend at American Express Bank (Switzerland). We hope you enjoyed your 17 minute stay at Barbados Free Press and we hope you return soon!

Original Article…

What A Way To Kick Off 2008!

Hello friends,

We didn’t think it would happen until mid-January, but if the trend holds Barbados Free Press will welcome visitor number 2 Million within the hour.

When BFP published our first article back on January 17, 2006 we never dreamed that so many folks would be visiting us from Barbados, the rest of the Caribbean and around the world. We had no idea how well BFP would be received by Bajans who are hungry for freedom of speech and tired of the corruption that permeates our government.

Now, almost two years later – after two thousand articles and forty-one thousand reader comments – we will say hello to visitor number two million. It is said that wherever you go on this planet you will find a Bajan, and that must be true because we’ve had Bajans log on to BFP from as far away as Finland and Vietnam!

Our 2 millionth visitor will be here within the hour and we can’t wait to see where they will visit us from.

Thanks for your support dear readers. We would be nothing without each of you.

Barbados As A Single Party State – Adrian Loveridge Asks, Prime Minister Arthur Answers

First, a letter from Adrian Loveridge published today at Caribbean Net News…

Is Barbados in danger of becoming a single party state?

Dear Sir:

During at meeting at Alexandra School at his nomination, candidate for St Peter and current Prime Minister of Barbados stated, “I’m motivated in a special way by the determination never to see the DLP (opposition party) hold the reigns of office in this country.”

Owen Arthur added his “Government’s hard work over three terms including the lifting of foreign reserves to over BDS$2 billion.”

He said, “Such success should not be left in the hands of a party that was now more deeply divided than ever.”

Whether the average Barbadian voter is ready for a single party state is another issue and with just over two weeks before the general election is due to be held we shall all know the answer very shortly.

Adrian Loveridge

(Original online at Caribbean Net News Link Here)

And now the Prime Minister’s reply to such criticism (now that the BLP have taken down the video of Owen Arthur’s comments)

What was that old saying about “Walks like a duck…” ?

I’m No Tyrant Says Arthur

PRIME MINISTER Owen Arthur yesterday declared he was not a dictator or a tyrant.

“I am not now going to be at my age and station what I’ve never been and I know who I am and I have certain principles and values. The only thing I don’t want ever to be is a tyrant or a dictator,” Arthur said.

He told reporters after his nomination at Roland Edwards Primary School, Battaleys, St Peter yesterday, that “some people are interpreting statements” he “might have made” at his nomination meeting at Alexandra School, St Peter, on December 16, “to what they assume are dictatorial tendencies”.

Saying this General Election was a “very serious” one, the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) candidate noted that during the campaign the BLP would treat people with respect.

“We are going to be asking for another term of office not only on the strength of performance but on the calibre of the vision that we will be expressing for the country’s future and for the manner in which we represent to the country the challenges that the country faces and the response that we propose to put in place,” Arthur added.

“This new version of the Democratic Labour Party is not Errol Barrow, it is Hartley Henry and the Barbados political agenda regrettably is being now filled not with serious discourse or substantive issues nor willingness on the part of Opposition to want to take the Barbados public and ask for political support on the basis of the seriousness of their vision,” Arthur added.

“When I spoke, I spoke perhaps with a sense of disgust and disappointment that this is what our politics is being brought to and I had no intention whatsoever to destroy the Democratic Labour Party as an institution but to call the whole country to a higher purpose.

… read the article online at the Nation News (link here)