Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves plans to travel to St. Lucia to campaign for the re-election of the ruling party there, which has policies he opposes in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
St. Lucians will elect a new government on Dec. 1, three days after Vincentians vote in a general election.
Phillip J. Pierre and his St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) are hoping to buck the trend of St. Lucians not giving any political party a second consecutive term in office since 2006.
The SLP and Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP), which has been in office in Kingstown since March 2001, are sister parties.
The SLP has some policies that Gonsalves opposed when they were proposed by the main opposition, the New Democratic Party (NDP), in SVG.
These include VAT-free shopping day(s) and citizenship by investment (CBI).
The SLP has proposed a VAT-free shopping day in December, following the payment of a bonus salary to public sector workers on Dec. 22.
The NDP made a similar proposal before the announcement in St. Lucia, and Gonsalves dismissed it as a gimmick.
The NDP made the VAT-free shopping days proposal in 2020, when it also announced that if elected to office, it would reduce VAT from 16 to 13%.
Then, in January 2025, Coreas Ace Hardware announced that its customers will enjoy VAT-free shopping from Jan. 28 to Feb. 3 as the company will cover the VAT cost.
Then-senator Israel Bruce said the company’s decision was an endorsement of the New Democratic Party’s policy, adding that in the meantime, the ULP was offering Vincentians “fake orgasms”.
On Nov. 3, the SVG’s Opposition Leader, Godwin Friday, announced that if elected to office, the NDP will have VAT-free shopping on the first Monday in August and December.
Friday said he had discussed the policy proposal with businesspeople and acknowledged that it would be a challenge “doing the adjustments and the calculation, and so forth”, but not impossible to do.
“Let’s give everybody a break on this day. And it also helps the businesses because when you collect the VAT, it’s not the business getting it — it’s government.”
Gonsalves criticised the policy proposals later that same day, telling a campaign event in Murray’s Village that the NDP wanted “to kerfuffle people with gimmicks…
“One of them, he will have two days a year as VAT-free days. That’s a gimmick. They try that in Barbados. They stop it because it makes absolutely no sense,” Gonsalves said.
However, the Bahamas has VAT-free days and St. Kitts and Nevis has discounted VAT rate days.
Two days later, Pierre announced a VAT holiday while campaigning in St. Lucia, telling party supporters on Nov. 5, that public servants will receive a salary bonus on Dec 22, for a second consecutive year.
“If things work out well. When things work out, well, you see this Christmas, we are going to have one day that is going to be a VAT-free day,” the St. Lucian prime minister said.
“After you get your bonus and you get your salary, you are paying no VAT on nothing. That is the present we are giving you, the people of St. Lucia, and if they don’t like it, tell them, put it in their pipe and smoke it.”
Meanwhile, on Oct. 1, SVG’s opposition leader announced that within 60 days of an NDP administration, Public Assistance will be increased to EC$500, VAT on everyday goods and residential electricity reduced to 13%, a bonus salary will be paid to public servants, and public sector workers fired under the COVID-19 va.
Gonsalves dismissed each of the policy proposals in his weekly show on the state-owned NBC Radio on Oct. 8.
“We had already signalled that we were going to increase Public Assistance, and they suspect that I would have made an announcement for January in my Independence Day,” he said.
In his Independence Address on Oct. 27, Gonsalves announced the removal of VAT from eight items: chicken parts, processed cheddar cheese, canned tuna, canned sardines, chicken sausages of all types, cereals, lentils and categories of health drinks like Ensure and Suppligen.
He also announced in that same address that public sector workers in SVG will receive a 3% Cost of Living Allowance for three months in their November pay packets and that Public Assistance will be increased to EC$360, back-dated to September.
The NDP has maintained that it will implement a CBI programme, which Gonsalves opposes. SVG remains the only independent Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States member country without a CBI programme, even as the other five independent countries are moving to operate their programmes under a Regional Regulator for Citizenship by Investment Programmes proposed by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and have drafted legislation in that regard.
Earlier this year, Gonsalves suggested that CBI are inherently corrupt, a comment that drew a sharp public rebuke from Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, Gaston Browne who accused him of peddling the arguments of the same people who are opposed to any innovation that developing countries devise to carve out a space for themselves.
Campaigning in Bequia Friday night, Gonsalves took another broadside at CBI as he announced that he had asked the United States to consider visa-free entry for Vincentians.
To support his request, he pointed out that SVG is the only English-speaking Caribbean country that does not have relations with China and “does not sell its citizenship and passport under the euphemistically titled citizenship by investment program or otherwise”.
Meanwhile, on Monday, nomination day, Gonsalves expressed confidence that the ULP will win the Nov. 27 general election.
He noted the brief period between the SVG and St. Lucia elections, but said he will travel to St. Lucia to campaign with the SLP.
“… at the invitation of Philip Pierre, I will be in St. Lucia, at least for the final rally. I have to be there with my Labour comrade,” he said, adding that St. Lucia’s Opposition Leader Allen Chastanet, has criticised him in SVG.
“People may say I’m interfering in St. Lucian politics, but Chastanet came here and wash he mouth pon me… I don’t have a problem with that. If you wash your mouth on me, here I could come in your home and wash my mouth pon you, too,” the prime minister said, noting the meaning of the colloquial expression.
On Oct. 22, Pierre and the Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, travelled to St. Vincent, where they endorsed Gonsalves for a sixth term in office.
Acting like a spoil child strupes