Founder of the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), Sir James Mitchell says he is “co-operating with the team and the present leadership” of the party.
However, Sir James, who has had a years-long rift with the party, says he does not think it appropriate to attend the party’s convention “until such time as we’re all on the same wavelength with regard to policies”.
Speaking on Boom FM on Monday, the former prime minister said he sincerely hopes that the party can give some proper choices to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the future.
The NDP lost the March 2001 election, which came five months after Sir James demitted office at the end of a 16-year stint.
Halfway into his fourth term in office, Sir James agreed to an early election amidst the political unrest of April 2000.
Speaking on Monday, one day after the NDP elected a new executive, Sir James said that the party has to get right its policies on tourism, aviation, agriculture, and culture.
“Lots of things we have to do,” he said, adding that Carnival is coming up and a lot of money is going to be spent on it.
“How much is spent on the other festivals? The Bequia Music Festival is now the second largest festival in the country. How much input does the Ministry of Tourism and Culture have to that? So, we have a lot of things, which we have to do to put St. Vincent on the right track, and there has got to be more analysis.
“It is not enough to simply say things are not going right. You have got to come up with the solutions that the people would be satisfied with and be satisfied that you can make a difference,” he said.
iWitness News understands that the NDP and Sir James are in the process of patching up their differences after a few rough years under the leadership of Arnhim Eustace, who led the party to four consecutive electoral defeats.
Unless the NDP is successful with their election petitions case, a dim possibility as far as I am concerned, they will surely lose five-a-row.
I’m not a Mitchell supporters or partial to no politician but he is making a lot of sense with his comments. NDP may be better off hiring him as their political strategist. Sometimes an individual may not be effective in one position but may be a genius in another. Food for thought.
The last paragraph says it all!!!
The quest to “remain relevant” #rollseyes
Are you kidding me this Guy is the worse, he or his NDP party that he founded is no good for SVG and i mean no good, Please take a look back from when they were in power and what the hell they did to, only thing that party do for people of SVG was the help themselves and their own People.
Are you describing our present PM? Then you are right. The country has the highest poverty and crime in its history. Mitchel was not very good, he just had a better global situation at the time. Unfortunately our PM now is even worse. The only reason we are not Zimbabwe is because the other weak but not as weak Caribbean nations prop us up. Our present leadership knows nothing about running a tiny nation, only how to borrow money to make it appear they know something.