Lessons From the Trinidad and Tobago Elections For St. Vincent and the Grenadines

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – The Barbados-based regional political scientist, Peter Wickham, be lives that crime and the economy can cause the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to lose the upcoming general elections, as had been the case in Trinidad and Tobago.

Analyzing the April 28 defeat of the then ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) to the United National Congress (UNC) led coalition of interest, Wickham believes that the prime minister Stuart Young, who announced the election date in Port of Spain, one day after he had been sworn in March, should have given himself more time.

Young had taken over the government from Dr. Keith Rowley, who stepped down from active politics on March 16. The PNM had been seeking a third consecutive victory at the polls, but lost by a commanding margin to the Kamla Persad Bissessar led UNC coalition.

The ULP is seeking a sixth consecutive five-year term in office with Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who turns 79 in August, at the helm. He plans to lead the party into another general election 10 years after announcing that he was stepping down to make way for a new set of leaders.

Wickham commented on whether Rowley should have demitted office earlier and whether Young should have waited longer to call the elections.

“My personal feeling is that Stuart Young called it when he did because Stuart Young was concerned about going into an election in six months’ time, which is the same concern I have for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, that when you go into an election when the US economy is in recession, it is extremely difficult for you to do anything,” Wickham said on a radio program here on Sunday.

The United States has slapped a 10 per cent import tariff on most countries, with other countries seeing tariffs ranging from 12 to 47 per cent also levied on their goods.

In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean was projected to moderate from 2.4 per cent in 2024 to two per cent in 2025, before rebounding to 2.4 per cent in 2026.Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, leader of the ULP (File Photo)

The forecasts were revised downward by 0.5 percentage point for 2025 and 0.3 percentage point in 2026 compared with those in the January 2025 WEO.

Wickham said the lifeline for the Trinidad and Tobago economy had been the Dragon gas deal involving Venezuela. But the United States later revoked the Office of Foreign Assets Control license granted to Port of Spain to allow Shell, the National Gas Company, and contractors to explore, produce, and export natural gas from the project.

“The Dragon deal has fallen off, and you’re in a situation where you have to battle an increasing cost of living and dwindling reserves and resources, and then you got to fight an election on top of that.”

Wickham said his view was that Young had hoped that the euphoria of the PNM in power would have carried the party over the line “because he was close to the Ministry of Finance and understood what the reality would be like in six months.

NDP Leader, Dr. Goodwin Friday“I honestly think in six months, they would have been facing a 1986-style defeat, because I don’t believe that they could impact on those issues.” In 1986, the PNM lost its first general election in 1986 to the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), which won 33 of the 36 seats in the Parliament.

“You can’t change crime. Crime will be a problem for many years to come, and you can’t fix the economy or bring down the cost of living, and especially when Trump is promising tariffs that will make your life a lot harder.”

Wickham said the “idea of managing change and transition is key”, adding that political parties across the region still have to understand how best to transition from an old to a new leader.

“Whether we like it or not, the question of how much longer Ralph Gonsalves will continue, I think, is important, and is a question that people are asking, and I certainly think that we need to look now to this model to see if transition can be managed more effectively in that sense.”

Wickham said Trinidad and Tobago demonstrated challenges associated with managing a three-term government.

He noted that the PNM has served more than three terms before, adding, “but clearly once it got to the third term, there were challenges presented.

“St. Vincent and the Grenadines has demonstrated how to manage a second-term government, a third-term government, a fourth-term government, and now, perhaps even a fifth-term government.”

The New Democratic Party (NDP), which was elected to office in 1984, won four consecutive general elections.

However, the fourth term was cut short as a result of political unrest that resulted in general elections being held in March 2001, halfway through the fourth term, bringing the ULP to office.

“… no government has ever gone this long before. But, usually you will have a landslide initially. That gives you space,” Wickham said.

The ULP won 12 of the 15 seats in 2001 and repeated the feat in 2005, before losing four seats in 2010, a result that was duplicated in 2015.

The party won a fifth term in 2020, with a 9-6 majority, having nudged the North Leeward seat into its column by one vote after a contentious recount.

“In the case of St. Vincent, managed decline in terms of seats that took place after the second term, where you’ve had a relatively marginal government that has continued notwithstanding for three terms. And I find that fascinating,” Wickham said.

“So, to me, this is a lesson here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines that as a political analyst, I’m looking at to see how exactly you manage it. Trinidad and Tobago demonstrated that a third-term government in Trinidad and Tobago will have the same problems of a third-term government anywhere else.”

Wickham said that the identification of two key issues will be an important lesson.

“… that a government will lose on economy and crime; they can lose on an economy of crime, regardless how popular they are.

“So that’s a lesson I think, that we have to learn, which is also relevant, again, to St. Vincent, because those issues will come to the fore in St. Vincent.”

Vincentians are expected to go to the polls by November, at the end of the five-year life of the government, which, constitutionally, can remain in office until February 2026.

So far this year, the country has recorded 10 homicides, including a death resulting from a police officer shooting a man in the line of duty.

As of May 5, 2024, the country had recorded 17 homicides, before ending on 54, one less than the record set in 2023. There were 42 homicides in 2022.

Some political observers say that Gonsalves is preparing his arguments for any uptick in violence.

He has suggested in recent public comments, that alleged foreign supporters of the NDP who want to see a citizenship by investment programme in SVG would turn to violence if their other efforts to discredit his government ahead of the polls fails.

Gonsalves has also said that the impact of US sanctions on Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana could result in criminals from those countries coming to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Meanwhile, Wickham said communication was also an issue in the Trinidad and Tobago election, mentioning social media and “managing a campaign that … speaks to the person and says what is in it for me, that does not appear to be aloof, that does not appear to set a leader aside.”

Wickham said that a low voter turnout could have “a landslide impact” in the way that a high voter turnout could.

Speaking specifically about Trinidad and Tobago, he said the 1986 polls had a high voter turnout than the previous election as was also the case in 2025.

“So people came out to vote out the PNM in ‘86. People stayed home to vote out the PNM in 2025, and that comparison, I think, is an important lesson, because there’s a different dynamic in each instance, but it is clearly equally as impactful in that regard.

“So in short, those will be my critical lessons … and I do believe that you can learn a lot from those issues in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as you attempt to chart your course forward for this electoral campaign.”

Wickham said he was “really, really excited and keen” to see the outcome of the 2025 elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines “because all of the records have been broken, all the models have been broken, and in a sense, it’s emerged as a model in and of itself. You know, how to make it work?”

He said it was “ironic” that Gonsalves, “one of the foremost professors of political science in the Caribbean in a previous career, would have written about a lot of these things and now it is that we are getting to watch it first-hand”.

Wickham agreed that in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other Caribbean countries, the political leader matters.

“I’ve always argued, all across the world, the Westminster system, we have replaced a king with a prime minister, and we like to look towards a prime Minister as we will look towards the king.”

He said that in his survey of electors, party loyalty and the prime minister are usually the top two considerations.

“So yeah, leadership is absolutely important, and people will compare leaders. … And I think in the case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, not only will they compare leaders, but they will compare potential leaders because I think that that part of the conversation also emerges as well.”

He said the candidate who runs in a particular constituency ranks “low down” in voters’ considerations, but added that constituency representatives can grow over time.

“But at first blush, you choose a party, you choose a government, you choose a leader, and fairly low down on the totem pole is the question of the preferred representative, because the representatives can’t do nothing unless the party is in power.”

Wickham cited his home country, Barbados,  as an example, adding that Mia Mottley, who is now prime minister, having made a clean sweep of the polls twice — lost her first election campaign “to a guy who wasn’t even a minister”.

Wickham said that Mottley’s seat is now the safest in Barbados.

“… but at the same time to get your foot in the door, the question of leadership is far more important than constituency representation”.

The political analyst said that in smaller constituencies such as in the Grenadines, the British Virgin Islands, and Barbuda, “you can have a candidate that bucks a trend.

“But in the large majority of cases where you’re talking about thousands and thousands of, it’s not going to make a difference.”

Wickham said that in Trinidad and Tobago, the “believability factor” of the challenger was less important than “the dislike factor on the other side”.

He said he wanted to believe that the majority of Trinidadians do not actually think that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar can do a lot of the things she promised.

“And I believe that a lot of people … supported her notwithstanding, because the focus was on Rowley. So I think that that may very well have been it.”

He said that in the last election in Barbados, Mottley was proposing certain things, and was using the phrase, “Give me your vote and watch”.

“But when I look at her shopping list, she says she’s going to deliver what? Twenty garbage trucks and 10 buses. And, it was little things that not that hard to do.

“So she was able to say, you know, she ticked off those items. The big ticket that she had to deliver was the restructuring of the economy and the rescheduling of the debt. And that was also achieved, not in 60 days, but it was achieved within 100 days by going to IMF.

“I’m not convinced that this is the case with Kamla Persad Bissessar because her pledges … were pretty sweeping. … I think the believability is a factor. But I think in her case, the believability was second to the dislike for the other side.”

Wickham said that Rowley has been likened to a raging bull and a pitbull, “which is effective sometimes, but it comes to point sometimes where people find it offensive.

“And I think that that’s the challenge that he faced”.