KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Political leader of the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) Dr. Ralph Gonsalves yesterday emphasized his party’s third term victory as he mocked Opposition Leader Arnhim Eustace.
Eustace, who last December led his New Democratic Party (NDP) to a third consecutive defeat against the ULP, had said that the ULP would not last a year in office.
He recently told I Witness News that it does in fact seem that the ULP will celebrate its first anniversary of its third term on Dec. 13.
Gonsalves, who is also Prime Minister, said that Eustace made at a “wake … without cocoa tea” in Kingstown his pronouncement about the ULP not lasting a year.
He further said that in a bid to stave off an internal challenge for leadership of the NDP, Eustace said that the ULP not would live out its five-year term — until 2015.
“Well, we are still here and we are just two weeks away from the year,” Gonsalves said at the ULP’s 18th convention.
He said that maybe Eustace had since “had some cocoa” tea and acknowledged that his predictions might not be realised.
“We will go to the polls when the good Lord speaks to me and I advise the Governor General that we will go to the polls. He (Eustace) has no determination in that matter,” Gonsalves said.
“They treat the 13th day of the 12th month as though it is nothing,” Gonsalves said, nothing the story in the Bible book of Esther in which Haman was hung on the gallows he had built of Mordecai.
“We received a mandate and there are only three political parties that I know in the western world, and including Europe, that survived this economic meltdown internationally and one of them is the Unity Labour Party,” Gonsalves said.
He noted that there has been a change of government in Trinidad and Tobago, the British Virgin Islands, Britain, Portugal, and Spain, even as the ULP, the St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party and the Dominica Labour Party were returned to office.
“So, never mind whatever they come with. We are a unified and blessed people and there is a guiding hand to make sure that the force of righteousness will always triumph over that of evil,” Gonsalves said.