Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves says his Unity Labour Party has done so well in office over the last 24 years that it should not be campaigning as it seeks a sixth consecutive five-year term.
“We really should not be campaigning, given what we have done for St. Vincent and the Grenadines and what we have done together,” he said at Rabacca on Sunday at a rally to celebrate the ULP’s 24th anniversary in office.
“They say we couldn’t build a hospital where we are building one of the best hospitals in the entire Eastern Caribbean right now at Arnos Vale,” Gonsalves said.
The government has borrowed US$125 from Taiwan to build the hospital and has awarded a US$100 million contract to a Taiwan firm to build the Arnos Vale Acute Referral Hospital without returning to tender, as the World Bank had suggested.
“We are building a modern port because the old one falling down and the Mickey Mouse one which they built down Campden Park can’t serve us,” Gonsalves said.
The EC$600 million seaport being built in Kingstown is now scheduled to be completed in August, three months later than initially planned because of the loss of reclamation material because of a decoupling of metal sheets.
“Before the end of this year, that will be open for business. Without that, the country would have been locked off,” Gonsalves said.
He also mentioned that his government built the Modern Medical and Diagnostic Centre (MMDC) in Georgetown and the Rabacca Bridge.
The prime minister said 64 people are receiving dialysis for kidney problems at MMDC free of charge.
“We spend nearly EC$5 million to keep alive 64 people,” the prime minister said.
“We institute the education revolution, the health and wellness revolution, the housing revolution,” he said, adding that the number of houses in SVG has almost doubled since his government came to office in March 2001.
“We have improved the health services in this country beyond any belief — life expectancy gone up, provide water, garbage collection.
“We built the sports facility at Arnos Vale for World Cup Cricket,” he said, referring to the EC$38 million spent in 2024 to refurbish the Arnos Vale Sport Complex, which fell into disrepair after spending EC$56 million to upgrade it for the 2007 Crick World Cup.
“We built the Sir Vincent Beache Stadium,” the prime minister said.
The ULP promised a national station when it first came to office in 2001, but delivered the track ahead of the 2020 polls and have since begun work on the other infrastructure.
“They say the dance couldn’t pay for the light. Let me tell you this: the NDP is led by a weak leader who is a fake who doesn’t have what it takes to lead,” the prime minister said of the main opposition New Democratic Party.
“I want to make that point very clear. He has no connection with the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the NDP consists of a set of grumpy old men and underwhelming neophytes not fit for purpose, for the second quarter of the 21st century.”
In the 2020 polls, with Friday at the helm for the first time, the NDP won the popular vote, which the ULP had held since 1998.
Gonsalves said the NDP has “no vision; they have no clear philosophy. They have no appropriate policies or programmes.
“You know what they are is like a pickup side. We in the Unity Labour Party, we are always representing the change. We are the change,” said Gonsalves, who turns 79 in August and is leading the ULP into another election a decade after he asked for another term to transition to a new set of leaders.
General elections are widely expected by November, ahead of the February 2026 constitutional deadline.
Gonsalves said the ULP will seek at least six new candidates.
“We represent the change because our ideas and our philosophy is always to embrace change and embrace new ideas. That’s why we educate the young. That’s why we educate the students…” Gonsalves said.
“We are the one who brought in special programs like the YES and the SET and the ON-SITE and the PRYME and the Fast to help people who go into the Olympics, … the Home Help for the Elderly; social protection like you have never seen before,” Gonsalves said.
I love this so much because it’s proves my point. The ulp really thinks they own this country, and that the people have to be grateful for them, they parade themselves as if they are the saviour of vincentians and without them we shall surely perish. So because of all that they feel they must not campaign because we must fall in line and support them to pay our dues. This is such a sad sad state that the government now thinks they entitled to hold power over this country.
The ULP did everything in SVG.
Before 2001 SVG did not exist.
There is no democracy is SVG. Ralph Gonsalves has stolen it.