St Vincent opposition party celebrates historic election win

Original article by Natricia Duncan Caribbean correspondent

The New Democratic party (NDP) in the Caribbean country of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is celebrating a historic landslide victory, taking 14 of 15 seats, according to preliminary results.

The decisive vote was a crushing defeat for the Unity Labour party (ULP), which has been in power since 2001.

The outgoing prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, was the only ULP candidate to hold on to their seat in the elections where there was a severe decline in the party’s previous nine-seat majority.

Gonsalves, the Caribbean’s longest-serving prime minister, will hand over the reins to the NDP’s Godwin Friday.

“Looks like a giant has fallen in Vincy,” Peter Wickham, a regional political analyst, said on Facebook as it became apparent that Gonsalves, a prominent climate justice and slavery reparations advocate, was going to lose the elections.

Other governments in the region congratulated Friday on the result. Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, who is dealing with the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, described the election as “an important moment for the Vincentian people”.

He said on X: “I wish Dr Friday every success as he undertakes the responsibility of national leadership, and I pray God’s guidance and wisdom upon him in the work ahead. Jamaica values its close friendship with St Vincent and the Grenadines, and we look forward to strengthening our cooperation as we continue to build a more resilient and prosperous Caribbean region together.”

Taiwan’s ambassador to SVG, Fiona Fan, also congratulated Friday. The NDP has previously proposed severing relations with Taiwan and restoring ties with China. This year’s NDP manifesto made no mention of ending ties with Taipei, however, and the party had been criticised for failing to clarify its position on the issue.

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Under Gonsalves’s leadership, SVG has continued to cooperate with Taiwan over infrastructure, education and healthcare. The relationship has yielded benefits such as the scholarships, support for the international airport and help with the construction of a state-of-the-art hospital.

“Taiwan and Saint Vincent share universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights,” the Taiwan foreign ministry said on Friday.

Friday, 66, a lawyer, took over leadership of the NDP in 2016 but has been in parliament since 2001.

His party had promised to create “more and better-paid jobs”, address rising crime and violence and improve healthcare and infrastructure. It had also pledged to follow other Caribbean countries in allowing individuals to gain citizenship through significant financial contributions to the economy.

SVG is the only independent state among the seven-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States not to offer citizenship by investment.

Emanuel Quashie, an international relations lecturer at the University of the West Indies, has blamed the defeat on a combination of factors. “There was a lot of anti-Ralph sentiment given that he was in power for so long. Granted, he did do a lot in terms of transforming SVG,” he said.

“He took us through the global financial crisis. He took us through the global pandemic. He took us through the La Soufrière volcanic eruption, Hurricane Beryl and previous climate change episodic events. But I think that wasn’t a concern for many of the voters either. I also think that the messaging from the ULP was not strong and convincing enough because I did not see them leaning enough on a lot of their wins.”

The government’s vaccine mandate during the Covid-19 crisis also had a serious impact on support for the ULP, Quashie said. The mandate, which required most frontline workers to be jabbed, resulted in some losing their jobs.

In 2021, Gonsalves was taken to hospital after being hit on the head with a stone in a demonstration against the vaccine mandate.