Elections have consequences…. Indeed

AS THIS IS our last weekend issue for 2025, let me join with the rest of the SEARCHLIGHT Board, management and staff in extending heartiest greetings to our readers and the entire Vincentian community, here at home and in the entire diaspora. It will be our first Christmas for nearly

quarter of a century under a new administration, and we should all extend our best wishes and hopes for guidance as we navigate the formidable challenges ahead.

I begin by recalling an oft-repeated statement by our former Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, that “elections have consequences”. He must be analysing those from his own perspectives now. But so should we too even as we enjoy our Christmas season while finding time to think ahead of what lies before us in 2026. I might add, not just in a narrow sense for Vincentians, but for Caribbean people and the hundreds of millions of oppressed people worldwide.

Take the people of Trinidad and Tobago for starters. They have had to endure almost six decades of Tweedle dee/Tweedle dum politics veering between what were fundamentally the same two sets of political forces. In the process all the hard work, sacrifice and effort of the anti-colonial movement from the thirties right up to the seventies were frazzled away under party politics. The constant cycle of maladministration, neglect and the selling of the people’s birthright ended up in a cesspool of corruption and crime. Each cycle of elections had its own set of consequences, blinded by racial politics.

Earlier this year there was yet another round of general elections, even under a state of emergency, which resulted in a former Prime Minister, Ms. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, becoming PM for the second time. It has been but a few short months but, talk about consequences? In her short time at the helm so far, she began by significantly weakening the CARICOM backbone.

For all its shortcomings T&T has been one of the foundation pillars of the regional integration movement though it has not always been faithful to its regional commitments.

But Ms Persad Bissessar began by snubbing a CARICOM Heads of Government meeting. Worse, she responded to criticisms by intimating that CARICOM is not so important to T&T – CARICOM which through countries like ours supply T&T with fresh food weekly and buys so much of that country’s manufactured products. But, as if indicating a radical departure from agreed regional foreign policy, she openly dissed CARICOM’s stated commitment to the Caribbean being a “zone of peace”.

In so doing she made the ridiculous assertion that there could be no “zone of peace” when there is crime in the region.

But worse was to come for first, she allied herself with the criminal US policy of blowing up speedboats in Caribbean waters, accusing the inhabitants of drug running and endangering the lives of US citizens. The T&T leader openly supported the US’ “blow them up” policy. Then there came the open capitulation offering active support for US aggression against Venezuela, unashamedly taking the side of US militarism.