Political leader of the Unity Labour Party, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, used his speech at the party’s national council last Thursday to urge party supporters to forget about their grumbles and prepare to vote.
“Tonight I want to talk about our candidates. I want to talk also about the 10 foundational elements for our party and our programme, our policies. I want to talk about the family of labour because no Labour person, not one, must be home on Election Day,” said Gonsalves, who, for the second consecutive election, told party supporters that it will be his last as party leader.
“This is a family; we may have our grumbles and our frustrations. But when you’re on your marks, you leave the frustration and the grumbles. We stay together because we have done much. And we have many, many more rivers to cross in the interest of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to lift our country higher.”
The ULP is seeking an unprecedented fifth consecutive five-year term in office in general elections that the prime minister has said will be held by year-end, ahead of the March 2021 constitutional deadline.
“We got to do it together as a Labour family. It’s love. And where we have setbacks, we turn them into advances. This is not the time anymore to grumble about this or that. This is a time to celebrate our progress and to lift our country higher for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren to take it to higher heights,” said Gonsalves, who has been prime minister since his ULP came to office in March 2001.
“This is a bit of nostalgia for me because this is the last time I will preside at a national council meeting where candidates for general elections have been selected,” the 74-year-old leader said.
“We have to make sure that in these elections, we don’t stumble at all. And if anybody stumbles, someone must be there to hold us up and take us forward to victory. Everybody who has been selected has the most important quality: love for the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” he told the gathering at the Arnos Vale Sport Complex in a speech broadcast on his party’s radio station Tuesday night.
Gonsalves individually endorsed each of the party’s five new candidates and said that he and the other nine — including eight parliamentary representatives — who have faced the polls before “are warriors and I am the most seasoned of all the warriors”.
The ULP leader said he was “born with a rebel seed”.
“I am now a mature and wise rebel. I keep a patience and a calm. When everybody around losing their head, I keep mine. But I keep it focused on fighting always for the people.
“And anytime you have any uncertainty or any problem and you hear me get up in Parliament or on the radio and calm you and say we have a way out of this difficulty, we have a way out of this challenge on every single occasion, every single occasion, when challenges which crippling other countries came by us from outside, we have been able to meet satisfactorily those challenges and keep the ship of state going forward in progress and prosperity and improving the lives of ordinary Vincentians,” the prime minister said.
Gonsalves said he has been a political activist for 52 years, adding that he is the only person in St. Vincent and the Grenadines who has contested every election since 1979, when SVG gained independence.
“I put my bucket down among the people in love and caring and my runs are on the tins. Those who want to beat them off ha’ to go to the wicket of leadership, but in these difficult and perilous times, this is not a time for a trainee.
“This is not a time for an apprentice. This is the time for a seasoned warrior and a master builder who has a record of service to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” he said.
The ULP main challenger is expected to be the New Democratic Party, which control seven of the 17 parliamentary seats.
The ULP has been governing with a one-seat majority since 2010, when it lost four of the three seats that it held since 2001, when it secured a 12-3 victory, which it also repeated in 2005
In 2015, the ULP held on to government by a one-seat majority, a repeat of the 2010 election result.
The PM could have noted some achievements
of his ULP government over the last 20 years. Like AIA, perhaps the Education Revolution and more.
However, the ULP time in government has been a disaster for SVG: the failure of agriculture, the record levels of unemployment, especially youth unemployment, victimisation of workers and business-people, the high Value Added Tax on poor people, the high levels of crime and deaths. He created a society which few Vincentians will be happy with, the distribution of income in favour of a small group of people. Then his failed projects, like a National stadium. Vincentians should send this man into political retirement.
Good points Percival. Yes, our PM did do some good things. But, after 20 years the list should be much longer. AFTER 20 YEARS WE ARE EVEN POORER THAN WE WERE THEN!
His record on education is NOT BETTER than when the NDP was in office. The biggest difference is that those returning from a higher education today have no place to work. Many are recognizing that the economic policy of this man DOES NOT encourage investment! HIGH TAXES DISCOURAGE INVESTMENT!
Bias and victimization is a form of corruption and so is NEPOTISM. Everyone in SVG sees that most all those in the highest positions are family members of labour elite. THEY ARE NOT EMPLOYED BECAUSE THEY ARE THE BEST; THEY ARE EMPLOYED FOR REASONS OF POLITICAL FAVORITISM!!!
AT LEAST THE NDP HAS VOWED TO TAKE MEASURES THAT WILL ALLOW MORE INVESTMENT TO EMPLOY OUR YOUTH AND STOP THIS NEPOTISM !!!
“17 parliamentary seats?”
Really?
Love you too.
What is taking us Vincentians so long to learn from History? The USSR under Joseph Stalin, China under Mao to start with.
North Korea under the Kim’s, Cuba under the Castro’s, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, Venezuela under both Chavez and Maduro, St Vincent and the Grenadines under the Gonsalves family! Disasters after disasters! Learn just “Who were the Khmer Rouge?” The same Red shirts bunch!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-8689619/Who-Khmer-Rouge.html
Shall I go on and mention the list of failed states that had these red shirts ruled over them? Shall I go on and list for us the number of failed dictatorships the world has had the misfortune to encounter? When will us Vincentians learn from History?
Percival, retirement in a nursing home