Unity Labour Party leader tells rival candidates to avoid confusion

As the candidate selecion process heats up in the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP), political leader Dr Ralph Gonsalves is warning potential candidates against creating confusion, especially in the seats the party lost in the last elections and which it believes can be reclaimed.{{more}}

“I want to say this. I don’t want us to have a big bassa bassa in any constitutency. Ah don’t want that,” Dr Gonsalves warned in his feature address to the party’s 20th annual convention last Sunday at the Campden Park Secondary School.

“Because, you take North Leeward and South Leeward, these are very marginal constituencies which the NDP won,” he noted.

“These are easy to come back home, but it will be more difficult to bring them back home if we have confusion as to who is the candidate.

“And early o’clock, when I get the feel, I will go to persons and say, I think, Comrade, that this one – this person is the better person or the best person to run,” the party leader announced to rousing applause.

Lawyer and Senator Jomo Thomas and financial intelligence analyst Grenville Williams have both publicly signalled their interest in becoming the ULP’s candidate for the South Leeward constituency. In North Leeward, there are reports of at least three prospective candidates including lawyer Carlos James – making his entry to elective politics and former representative Dr Jerrol Thompson who failed to retain the seat in the 2010 general elections.

Dr Thompson had polled 2,009 votes to the New Democratic Party’s Roland ‘Patel’ Mathews 2,187. The result reversed the equally close outcome in 2005 when the NDP got 1,958 votes to the ULP’s1980, to take the seat.

In South Leeward, the ULP’s 2010 candidate, farmer David Browne got 2,394 votes, 199 less than the successful NDP candidate, former teacher Nigel Stephenson’s 2,593. Again this result reversed the outcome of the previous elections when the ULP’s candidate, former Health Minister Dr Douglas Slater won with 2,318 votes to the NDP’s 2,203 in another close contest.

The other leeward seat, Central Leeward has also been closely contested, with the ULP’s Maxwell Charles winning in 2010 with 2,295 votes to the NDP’s Norrel Hull’s 2,140.

In addition to North and South Leeward, the ULP also lost West and Central Kingstown in the 2010 elections, as the party’s parliamentary majority was cut from 12 – 3 to 8 -7.

“I know that they (NDP) feel that (because) they have the three seats in Kingstown, they think they going to hold them,” Gonsalves told the convention.

“Arnhim is weak and Luke Brown is going to highfall him the next general elections,” Gonsalves said in reference to the other Kingstown seat, East Kingstown where Opposition leader and NDP president Arnhim Eustace received 2,490 votes to beat first timer, economist and now Senator Luke Browne’s 2,117 in the 2010 polls. It was Eustace’s third win in the constituency.

“And I have to tell you this, on the mainland, captain out, all out,” Gonsalves said to the delight of the party faithful.

“When that captain get out, I am telling you, we taking Central and we are also taking West Kingstown,” Gonsalves added.

Central Kingstown was won for the NDP in 2010 by Major St Claire Leacock who secured 2,441 votes to the ULP’s Elvis Charles’ 2,063, while West Kingstown was won by engineer Daniel Cummings over lawyer Michelle Fife by 2,448 votes to 1,835.

December 2015 will mark five years since the last general elections.