Toward an understanding of the Gonsalves years (Pt 1)

By Marlon Bute

What follows is a general overview of the Gonsalves years, the opening frame of a wider examination of one of the most consequential political eras in our modern history. It lays down the broad contours. The pieces that follow, beginning with Part 1, will move closer to the ground, into the proximities, the encounters and the lived observations that reveal how power was acquired, exercised, defended, and ultimately rejected. This is the foundation upon which the remaining parts rest.

This essay was triggered by Ralph Gonsalves’s address after his overwhelming rejection by the Vincentian electorate. In the ordinary tradition of our young state, outgoing prime ministers congratulate their successors. He did not. Instead, he suggested that the new government, only days old, had already begun to “implode”. With that choice, he missed an opportunity to help heal a country that, under his leadership, had become more fractured than at any other point in its modern political life.

The speech was delivered on a Saturday morning, days after the  Nov. 27 general elections, from the party’s radio station at McKie’s Hill, framed by a backdrop emblazoned in red, the star taking its familiar position behind him. He wore a long-sleeved red shirt. On this morning, he looked more tired than usual, with the bags under his eyes protruding pregnantly.

It had been a gruelling six weeks and a stunning and humiliating defeat, and no doubt they had taken a heavy toll on the self-declared world boss and king of the Caribbean. That morning had already seen showers, as had the day before, and as often happens in regimes marked by lapses and fumbling, the microphone went live before he was ready. Listeners heard him object to a Bridgette Blucher gospel song simply because she had appeared on an NDP platform. Oblivious to the live mic, disoriented by the historic outcome days earlier, he instructed them not to play Bridgette Blucher’s music since she had performed for the victorious NDP.

It was my intention to write only about that address, its tone, its lack of grace, and what it revealed about the man. I completed a version of that narrower piece. But as I revisited the moment, I found it impossible to isolate it from the wider history. The address was not a lapse. It was a distillation of an era. And so, the piece widened. The more I reflected, the more it made sense to provide a broader contemplation, one that encourages deeper study of what those years meant for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

I admired his intellect, his political acumen, and his extraordinary discipline in pursuit of his ambitions. He will remain a giant in Vincentian and Caribbean politics. His influence stretched beyond our shores, and he was undeniably impactful. Yet the nature of his rise is striking because it was not built on organic popular appeal in the manner of leaders such as Ebenezer Joshua, Milton Cato, James Mitchell, Vincent Beache, Arnhim Eustace or Godwin Friday. Nor did he attract the grassroots enthusiasm that someone like Major St. Clair Leacock continues to command. His popularity was narrated, structured, and constructed by him and his party apparatus. He did not build a mass base. His ascent came instead through political machination, negotiation, and strategic placement. And that confirms his formidability. Students of history and seasoned political actors would recognise his strategic gifts even when they oppose his methods.

I believe I am reasonably placed to offer these introductory notes. As a youth leader in the ULP during the 1990s, I observed Gonsalves closely. The years during which I was a young party member were instructive. Over time, as I grasped the consequences of his governance, I became an objective critic. I watched how Gonsalves accumulated power, how institutions were bent, and how the state itself slowly reshaped around the man at its centre. My perspectives here are not intended to be jaundiced. They are intended to bring clarity. The Gonsalves era deserves a careful and honest reckoning.

His political journey began in the turbulence of the late 1960s, when, as a student in Jamaica, he became involved in the Walter Rodney protests. When he returned to St. Vincent in the latter half of the 1970s, he came back with a doctorate in government and after being called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in London in the United Kingdom. With those credentials, he naturally stepped into local politics. His first attempt was with the United People’s Movement in 1979. That effort ended in defeat, and after the usual quarrels over leadership, which were a feature of his early political career, he broke away and formed the Movement for National Unity. He faced the electorate again in 1984 and again in 1989. Each time, the people refused him. Three elections. Three defeats.

Then came 1994, the year everything shifted. The MNU entered an electoral accommodation with the St. Vincent Labour Party, then led by Stanley “Stalky” John. The parties divided the constituencies between them, six for the MNU and nine for Labour. As part of the arrangement, Vincent Beache, who had long dominated North Central Windward, moved to South Windward. That single adjustment opened the way for Gonsalves to run in North Central Windward. Within this carefully negotiated alliance, he secured his first victory on  Feb. 21, 1994, entering Parliament for the first time. Later that same year, the two organisations formalised their union, merging to form the Unity Labour Party with Beache as leader and Gonsalves as his deputy. That merger became the platform from which he would later rise.

After the 1998 general elections, in which the ULP won the popular vote but did not win the government, he seized the opportunity to secure the leadership of the party. Once installed, he sought to bring down the New Democratic Party, then in its fourth consecutive term. Through confrontation and civil protest, regarded as the roadblock revolution, he helped force early elections and ascended to power in 2001.

His mantra was “together now”, but many Vincentians from ordinary occupations would say that this was not their experience. He embarked on a campaign of stripping persons of jobs and titles, from watchmen, ambulance drivers and cleaners to justices of the peace throughout the country. The assault did not end with working people. Senior positions throughout the public service, including statutory bodies, were replaced with those preferred by the Gonsalves administration. It is important to note that his rise was not born of a sudden groundswell of popular affection. It emerged from an engineered political crisis.

His administration was tested often in the courts, and it lost often. The Otto Sam matter was ruled unlawful, unreasonable, procedurally improper and disproportionate. The High Court eventually quashed the appointments of the clerk and deputy clerk of the House of Assembly for violating public service regulations. The mandatory vaccination programme, which cost hundreds their livelihoods, now sits before the Privy Council. A pattern had long been established. When tested, many of his administration’s decisions could not stand scrutiny.

Symbolically, only days after the population delivered its decisive 14-to-1 judgment against him, the High Court delivered another. It confirmed that the appointments of the clerk and deputy clerk, appointments long objected to by Godwin Friday and Daniel Cummings, were unlawful. It was a fitting legal punctuation mark at the close of an era.

From the moment Gonsalves was sworn in, and at a victory rally on April 1, 2001, at Victoria Park, recently renamed Independence Park, his self-perception exceeded anything the electorate had imagined. At the ceremony, he remarked on the “remarkable” fact that a man of Portuguese descent had become prime minister in a Black country, though no one had questioned his ancestry. It was he who inserted race into the narrative to make his victory more momentous than it really was. He had not had to overcome any racial barriers to do so. Standing there and hearing him pronounce as if he had triumphed despite race was as shocking as it was revealing. From the start of Gonsalves’s reign, individuals of similar extraction or family connection found themselves in powerful positions. Authority was centralised. Ministries were micromanaged. Public servants found that regulations did not always apply. Scholarships became political currency. Opportunity flowed not from the state, but from the man.

In time, he cast himself not as a public servant but as master of the space. The rhetoric of liberation and anti-colonialism faded. He declared himself world boss and king of the Caribbean.

He clung to power in much the same way that he had gained it, through scheming and political machinations rather than through sustained popular consent. His hold did not rest on affection but on authority, reinforced by access to the machinery of the state and its resources, which were deployed to strengthen and preserve that grip. For a time, it worked. Eventually, it could not.

Long before he crowned himself, I had authored a poem, “The Great Leader”, describing a man who smiled, hugged, touched, and charmed while the rivers dried up, and the people grew gaunt. It captured the man he would become.

The collapse began long before 2025. The vaccine mandate was one of its sharpest blows. Hundreds of public servants were dismissed by the Gonsalves government. Thousands suffered. Victimisation was widespread. Youth unemployment soared. The educated migrated. Infrastructure decayed: roads, the general hospital, police stations, schools and government buildings. Farms dwindled in size and number, and many farmers who had once been productive were forced into odd jobs or became labourers and night guards for schools. The murder rate rose. Stories of corruption hardened into public belief. Gonsalves, like the character I described in “The Great Leader”, grew in girth and wealth.

Gradually, the spell broke. Those who once cheered began to question. Those who once danced in red began to feel their own hardship. The gap between his wealth and their struggle became too wide. Fourteen-to-one was not an election result. It was a repudiation.

Gonsalves’s achievements must be acknowledged. He was respected regionally. He built an international airport that brought multiple airlines to the country. The Sandals resort followed, bringing international exposure and hotel-related employment. He expanded access to tertiary education and dubbed it the education revolution. He authored books, delivered speeches, and held influence beyond our shores. Under his leadership, St. Vincent and the Grenadines became the smallest country ever to sit on the United Nations Security Council. His intellect and discipline are undeniable. But these strengths fed a hunger for power that contributed to his decline.

His longevity had little to do with popularity. He did not build a mass party. He inherited one, and under his leadership its support steadily ebbed. By 2005, only four years after taking office, the ULP’s support had already fallen from its 2001 peak. By 2010, it declined further, and four seats were lost. Meanwhile, the NDP increased its popular vote in every election from 2005 onward. The trend was unmistakable. The NDP rose. The ULP declined.

The return of the NDP in 2025, with 14 seats and a 10,000-vote majority, was not a surge. It was the completion of disciplined rebuilding, first under Arnhim Eustace and then Godwin Friday. Friday did in one election what Gonsalves could not do in six. He won more seats and more votes than Gonsalves ever achieved. The NDP also performed better electorally than the ULP has ever performed.

In the end, the definitive judgment came from the people. Fourteen-to-one shattered the illusion of invincibility. It ended the culture of fear. It ended the belief that one leader could stand above the nation indefinitely.

This overview sets the stage for the parts that follow. Part One, already completed, moves into the proximities, the early encounters, the vantage points from which character reveals itself, and the small and large moments that foreshadowed what the Gonsalves years would become. In the correction delivered by the people lies the possibility of renewal, accountability, and a future in which no leader, however forceful or brilliant, stands above the nation again.

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