(NBC Radio SVG)
Dr Ralph Gonsalves has been reelected Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines for a fifth term.
The electorate gave Dr Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP) nine of the 15 seats in the Parliament.
It represents an increase of three seats on the previous one-seat majority he had enjoyed in the last two general elections.
It is also the first time that a political party has won five consecutive general elections there.
Gonsalves, 74, easily won his North Central Windward seat he has been representing since 2001, brushing aside the two other candidates in Chieftain Neptune of the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) and Kadmiel McFee of the CVG Green Party.
In a message posted on his Facebook page, Gonsalves thanked voters for returning the ULP to power.
“It’s celebration time. It is five in they tail,” he wrote,” as party supporters gathered for a celebration.
NDP leader Dr. Godwin Friday, 61, who led the party into a general election for the first time, easily retained the Northern Grenadines seat he has represented in Parliament since 2001. He polled 2,123 votes against 458 for the ULP’s Carlos Williams.
The NDP swept the two seats on the sister isle of the Grenadines. The other seat, in the Southern Grenadines was won by Terrance Ollivierre, who defeated Edwin Snagg by a margin of 1153 to 559.
One of the causalities of the election was Health Minister Luke Brown, who was defeated by newcomer, Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble in the East Kingstown constituency that had been represented by former NDP leader Arnhim Eustace, a former prime minister and finance minister, who quit active politics last year.
Brown, who polled 2, 306 votes had been defeated in the last two elections by Eustace and had hoped to win the seat in his absence. Bramble polled 2,547. In the North Leeward, the ULP’s Carlos James won by seven votes against the incumbent Ronald Mathews, polling 2, 287 as against 2, 280 for Mathews. James had lost the seat in the 2015 election by 12 votes. (Trinidad and Tobago Guardian)
