– Narrow third-term victory for Gonsalves
RALPH Gonsalves is scheduled to take the oath of office today as St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister for the third five-year term he won at Monday’s general election with a very challenging one-seat majority for the I5-member House of Assembly. Putting a bright, reassuring face to such a narrowly avoided defeat by Arnhim Eustace’s New Democratic Party (NDP), Gonsalves, a 64-year-old lawyer-politician said in a telephone interview yesterday:

“I am not daunted by the narrow victory. Clearly I would have preferred to win at least two more of the seats that we lost by narrow margins. But our victory came with the endorsement of more than half the voting electorate (almost 52 percent).

“This is not a time for triumphalism (in a third term victory) but to reach out to those of our fellow citizens who voted for the opposition (NDP) which has now lost three general elections in a row under its current leadership…”

Indeed the challenge to govern that Windward Island country, whose largely tourism and agriculture-based economy is, like the rest of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has been experiencing a comparative downward trend, could prove quite daunting for the maneuverability capacity of the charismatic Gonsalves.

Equally, though his problem is of a different nature, the NDP’s 65-year-old leader, Eustace, an economist, may find that he does not have much time to spend on thinking how close he came to becoming the new Prime Minister from Monday’s poll results.

The harsh arithmetic of the official preliminary results, as made available to this correspondent yesterday by Supervisor of Elections, Sylvia Findlay, reveal how very close victory came for Gonsalves’ ULP and defeat for Eustace’s NDP.

ELECTORATE
Of an eligible electorate of 101,000, some 32,356 or 51.43 percent voted for the incumbent ULP, while 30,174 or 47.96 percent of the valid ballots were cast for the NDP.

The final official results are expected today but arrangements are already in place for Gonsalves’ swearing-in ceremony, while the NDP’s Eustace must now face the unpleasant political reality that he has led the party into three successive electoral defeats in a row.

Therefore, while Gonsalves manoeuvres to steer his third-term administration out of rough political waters with a likely ten-member cabinet (he had 15 in the last government), Eustace may have to contend with the reality that rumblings about ‘time for leadership change’ can become more distinct within the NDP where current speculations include at least a Vice-President among potential candidates.
At the 2005 general election, the ULP had won its dozen seats with a 55.26 percent of the popular votes to the NDP’s 44.68 percent for its three seats.

But at last year’s national referendum for a new republican-style constitution, the governing party suffered a surprising defeat when it failed to secure a required 66.07 percent endorsement with the NDP’s “no” votes totalling 55.06 percent to the ULP’s 43 percent.

Objectively, therefore, it could be said that both the opposition NDP failed to maintain its victory momentum from the referendum, while the governing ULP proved unsuccessful in its tense battle to recover sufficiently from that defeat to secure a comfortable working majority.

Both contenders for state power are known to have received election campaign funding from overseas sources with the NDP introducing as a scare tactic, “Venezuelan (read President Hugo Chavez) influence in our governance”, and the incumbent ULP warning of “external threats to our sovereignty”.
Now comes the very difficult task of ensuring political stability with democratic governance and economic progress – minus, hopefully, the political theatrics that keep surfacing in the governance of Trinidad and Tobago.