After five consecutive terms in office, the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government believes the voters in the Southern Grenadines that have rejected their candidate at the polls over the past two decades will have a change of heart in the upcoming general elections because of the “excellent work” they have done following the hurricane Beryl disaster on July 1, 2024.
Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves expressed confidence of an eventual win in the Southern Grenadines as he addressed his party’s rally at Calliaqua, East St George, last Sunday night.
Gonsalves said his party was aware that “the Southern Grenadines has never been in the labor column, but on this occasion, we have the best chance of putting the Southern Grenadines in the labor column” and that such potential is driving the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) crazy.
Ahead of the general elections, the Unity Labour Party government has assigned the country’s chief radiographer, Chevonne Stewart, and put her in charge of the distribution of lumber, galvanize and other building materials in the recovery process of the hurricane-ravaged Southern Grenadines – a constituency the NDP has won since elected office in 1984, and even after losing governance in 2001.
Stewart was selected earlier this year as the ULP’s new candidate for the Southern Grenadines in the upcoming general elections, having replaced Edwin Snagg who has lost all bid to be elected since his party took office in 2001.
“Comrades, in the Southern Grenadines, we have an excellent candidate in Chevonne Stewart. This young lady is a highly skilled professional. She, in her substantive post, is the individual who is the chief radiologist at the hospital. This radiographer is in charge of all the x-ray facilities. She is in charge of the CT scan. She is in charge of the ultrasound. She is in charge of the MRI. She is in charge of all of that in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She is linked to both the Stewart family and the DeRoche family.
“She comes out of the stock of the Southern Grenadines. I want the people of the Southern Grenadines who are listening to me tonight, I want them to give her to me as an elected parliamentary representative so that she would be a full minister in the next government of the Unity Labour Party,” Prime Minister Gonsalves said.
Gonsalves said that under Stewart’s supervision, the houses in the whole of the Southern Grenadines have been “rebuilt better and stronger.”
“The people of Union Island, of Canawan and of Mairu are saying that the Unity Labour Party deserves a chance to represent them in Parliament because of the excellent work we have done. And in particular, because of the tremendous effort of Chevonne Stewart.
“The NDP never campaigned in the Southern Grenadines. Now, they’re all about. I ain’t countin’ me Southern Grenadines chicken yet, before I feel it hatch, but what I could tell you, we’re on the right path,” Gonsalves said.
Gonsalves claimed the NDP is running scared in the Southern Grenadines, and fighting for their life. He said their big problem is that party founder, former Prime Minister and Northern Grenadines MP Sir James Mitchell is no longer around to go to Canouan and Mayreau and Union Island to help them in their campaigns.
“So what they’re trying to do is to resurrect Sir James. But, as you and I know, he ain’t ready yet for resurrection because the trump from the Lord ain’t called yet. And I believe that when I call the election, that the Lord may not as yet sound the trump.
And if they sound the trump, well there’s no more election. All of us who going to heaven, the dead in Christ shall rise. And those who are here will be wrapped up – the rapture,” Gonsalves said.
Gonsalves claimed that the NDP is telling voters in the Southern Grenadines to “vote the memory card.” He also claimed that current MP, Terrance Ollivierre, has “failed the people of the Southern Grenadines and they’re saying no to him.”
Ollivierre is the New Democratic Party’s candidate. The party has not been in office since 2001.
