The polls had been showing a steady decline in support for the Unity Labor Party (ULP) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, so Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves called general elections early to catch the main opposition off guard and ended up with an embarrassing landslide defeat in elections held on Thursday.
Preliminary results from the electoral commission indicate that voters have become dissatisfied with the ULP, which has held power since 2001. Gonsalves, age 79, was seeking a record sixth consecutive term as leader at the time of the election.
The New Democratic Party (NDP), led by prime minister-elect and historian Goodwin Friday, age 66, will govern the mini Eastern Caribbean archipelago. The NDP captured 14 out of 15 constituency seats, leaving Gonsalves as the only ULP representative in the house. He retained his North/Central Windward seat and will now be the sole ULP member to challenge government policies. Previously, the ULP held nine of the 15 seats.
One significant result of the election was the loss of Gonsalves’s son, Camillo Gonsalves, who had formerly served as Minister of Finance and Economic Planning. Camillo, widely expected to succeed his father as ULP leader, lost his seat.
“It’s a humbling experience; it has never happened to me before, but I am going to do my very best. I am a very quick learner and I am pretty sure we can get up to speed very quickly. The election is behind us now and I want to see this country come together and we put ourselves and our backs to the wheel and quickly work to build St. Vincent and the Grenadines for all of us,” Friday told reporters
However, the NDP’s win could lead to a significant shake-up in the country’s foreign and economic policies. Friday had given strong hints during the campaign that the country would likely sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan and opt for mainland China, as most nations in the Caribbean Community have done. Less than 15 countries worldwide have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, China’s breakaway province.
Additionally, the NDP has pledged to join its neighboring states in offering golden passports and local citizenship under the Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP), through which foreigners pay a fixed sum and invest in development programs in exchange for a passport and citizenship.
Neighboring countries such as Grenada, Antigua, and St. Kitts have reported earning hundreds of millions of dollars from their citizenship-by-investment programs. This revenue helps offset losses from duty-free trade, the decline in banana exports to Europe, and other economic challenges.
Gonsalves and his ULP had staunchly opposed this avenue for raising development funding, contending that it was not sustainable and could collapse at any time due to pressure from Western nations. Those nations had often questioned the abilities of these small island nations to properly probe the backgrounds of applicants whose local passports allow them visa-free access to Europe and other destinations.
As he reflects on his loss and more than 20 years as PM, Gonsalves leaves the region as a head of government with some significant development accolades, including the construction of the Argyle International Airport, allowing the world’s major heavy lift airlines to fly to the country, replacing the old airport with its limited runway. Argyle, five miles outside the city, was opened in 2017.
Reacting to the unprecedented ULP defeat, Camillo Gonsalves was gracious and reflective, saying, “The electorate has spoken.”
“The voter is always right. And I believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God. And even in my disappointment tonight, I hold fast to those beliefs as the foundation of our democracy. They say that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. And I’m learning a lot tonight. I came to representative politics, fancying myself as someone who could transform what voters should expect from a politician in terms of style, in terms of substance, and in terms of what the politician actually delivers in a tangible way, despite my leaders’ frequent warnings that projects don’t win elections; people win elections. I devoted the majority of my waking hours to trying to deliver tangible, lasting, game-changing benefits to the widest possible cross-section of constituents in East St. George,” his constituency.
In the region, all eyes now turn to neighboring St. Lucia where Prime Minister Phillip Pierre and his Labor Party (SLP) will come up against the United Workers Party (UWP) of former prime minister Allen Chastanet on Dec. 1, Pierre is going into the polls with 13 of the 17 seats but polls show that the SLP can lose a few to its main rival. These two elections in the regional bloc now bring the tally to nearly a dozen for this year, with contests already held in Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Belize, Bermuda, Anguilla, Suriname, Curacao, The Turks and Caicos Islands, the Cayman Islands, and now St. Vincent, among others, capping one of the busiest electoral years on record.
