The opposition New Democratic Party’s (NDP) candidate for East St. George, Laverne Gibson-Velox, says urgent matters have not been addressed in the constituency since the last general election, held in November 2020.
She is, therefore, urging constituents to turn their back on Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves and elect her as their representative in the upcoming polls.
Campaigning in Glen recently, Gibson-Velox noted the mini-manifesto she released during the campaign for the 2020 election, when she made her first bid to win the seat.
“… some of the things that were in here, like refurbishing the clinics at Calliaqua and Enhams, five years ago, they remain the same — no they’re a little worse,” she said.
“Up to this day, the police station, when you pass by, you see pieces falling off of it,” she said of the police outpost in Calliaqua, a town on the south coast of St. Vincent.
“As a matter of fact, there’s a drain outside the police station that has ground itch in it because nobody cleans it,” she said.
This is the case although more than 30 people were on the town warden’s payroll, Gibson-Velox said.
“… 30-plus people on his payroll, but the drains in Calliaqua reek, stink. The one that runs in front of the rep’s office stink and somebody is trying to make the excuse that it is at sea level.”
Velox said that things in the constituency are addressed after she highlights them, often by posting videos on social media.
“I went there, I took a video of it; I get so much cuss. But people have to understand their opinion of me is not my business,” she said.
“They could say what they want. I telling them the truth in pictures, in videos, so they would know exactly what’s going on. So, when they’re cursing me, I realise that the truth hurts, and they’re trying to protect the precious prime minister’s son,” Gibson-Velox said.
“Well, the prime minister’s son is an adult, and he needs to grow up and start acting like an adult, and take responsibility for the constituency that the people elected him to represent.”
She, however, said it is too late for the MP to do so.
“Elections are going to be called soon. They can’t hold out forever and regardless to what they say or do, the New Democratic Party is going to take over.”
The general election is widely expected by November, ahead of the February 2026 constitutional deadline.
Gibson-Velox spoke about her hands-an approach and told constituents that she usually does not make promises.
“Y’all will see me everywhere, doing everything, making sure that this constituency is in pristine condition,” she said, adding that giving people 16 days of road work a year will be a thing of the past.
“There’s a drain right down on the road below here, where they have those shops … it is stink. It has been like that forever. Nobody is even given a little job … to clean that.
“The people of East St. George, you could almost say they live in squalor with the way that those drains are not cleaned, and they stink. That’s not right. We need a clean environment to live in and to survive in.”
Gibson-Velox said she had contacted the traffic department to install speed bumps on recently rehabilitated roads in Calliaqua.
“… that road in Calliaqua has now become a race track and school has reopened, and we have to protect our children, so they need to go in and make sure that some measures are put in place to protect our children and to slow down the drivers in Calliaqua.”
She also expressed concern about manholes along the road that were covered with plywood that is now breaking up.
“That is another accident waiting to happen, because the children run up and down there, and they can easily fall in,” she said.
“East St. George, I am humbly asking you for your support. You have seen me at work. You have seen what I can do,” Gibson-Velox said.
“You know that I am not going to divide this constituency because dividing our people is counterproductive to our development. We are one nation, one people, one Vincy. We have to work together for the greater good of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.” She expressed confidence that constituents have made up their mind to elect her.
“You can count on me to take care of you and to take care of the constituency of East St. George,” Gibson-Velox said, adding that Opposition Leader Godwin Friday has expressed confidence in each of the party’s candidates.
“And I’m telling you, I am convinced that the team that we have is the best team ever to take St. Vincent and the Grenadines forward,” she said.
Gibson-Velox said the NDP team is competent, reliable, caring, and people-centred.
“But I am particularly pleased with the fact that we have singled out our young people for special recognition going forward as a government because we are seeing too many of our young people just knocking about. Some of them told me, ‘Mrs. Velox, this is not us. We just don’t have anything else to do.’
“NDP will make sure you have something to do, because if you don’t get a job, you’ll get an apprenticeship, or you will have the opportunity to learn a skill to make your own money,” she said, echoing the NDP’s Youth Guarantee Pledge.
“We have to reinstate the dignity and the independence in our people,” she said.
“And people of East St. George, the $500 they’re going to be giving you in a T-shirt, with the economy as it is, and inflation so high, is one trip to the supermarket and then you have the rest of the five-year term where you catching hell.”
Gibson-Velox said the NDP “is the best thing, I think, that has ever happened to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
She said Louis Jones, who represented East St. George under the NDP, “left a legacy in this constituency.
“So, another New Democratic Party representative in East St. George will be the icing on the cake. I am ready, and I know y’all are ready for me. So East St. George, let’s do this together and build East St. George, and, by extension, St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Gibson-Velox said.