PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Dr Ralph Gon­salves will take his po­lit­i­cal bow, af­ter the com­ple­tion of his his­toric fifth term as Prime Min­is­ter of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

He con­firmed while speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, that this term will be his last.

“This is the last time, this is the last time. Part of my po­lit­i­cal task is to make sure that the suc­ces­sion in the par­ty, in the gov­ern­ment, that it goes clean,” he said.

Dr Gon­salves, 74, said it was his du­ty to com­plete what he start­ed be­fore he leaves the post be­hind.

“The peo­ple have tak­en me at my word that I, they have giv­en me an op­por­tu­ni­ty so that I wouldn’t leave be­hind any un­fin­ished task. It’s one thing to give me the glass emp­ty to fin­ish, three quar­ter or more but I have to fin­ish fill­ing up the glass,” he said.

The win in Thurs­day’s elec­tion saw Gon­salves’ Uni­ty Labour Par­ty in­creased their ma­jor­i­ty in the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines par­lia­ment as they won one more seat com­pared to the 2015 elec­tion.

But Gon­salves not­ed that the par­ty had lost ground in some seats they held.

“The ma­jor­i­ty is re­duced in many of the seats. Peo­ple are say­ing among oth­er things, ‘You’re very well in di­rect­ing the af­fairs of the coun­try. We think that you’re do­ing a num­ber of the big strate­gic things well but in the process there are many more per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed things of an im­me­di­ate na­ture that you have to pay some at­ten­tion to more than per­haps you’ve paid in the re­cent past’,” he said.

For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ralph Maraj said the an­nounce­ment that Dr Gon­salves won’t be re­turn­ing was in keep­ing with his char­ac­ter.

“The fact that Ralph Gon­salves has in­di­cat­ed that this is go­ing to be his last term is in con­so­nance with the char­ac­ter of the man. He doesn’t want to hold on to pow­er.”

Maraj said he wasn’t sur­prised by Gon­salves’ his­toric re-elec­tion as he said it’s a tes­ta­ment to his strong lead­er­ship which he has con­tin­ued to show.

“He’s a con­vic­tion politi­cian in my view. And he will con­tin­ue to pro­vide lead­er­ship in the CARI­COM re­gion,” said Maraj point­ing to Dr Gon­salves’ in­volve­ment in the Guyana elec­tion fi­as­co ear­li­er this year.

“He was not afraid to take a po­si­tion that you know, the votes must be count­ed and clar­i­ty and trans­paren­cy must be achieved,” Maraj said.

“I’m not sur­prised that the peo­ple of Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines have giv­en him an­oth­er man­date. It’s giv­en him a his­toric mo­ment, it is a his­toric vic­to­ry,” he said.

Maraj be­lieves that Gon­salves, along with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and Ja­maica’s An­drew Hol­ness, are some of the strong lead­ers with­in the CARI­COM.

He said that with such lead­ers, CARI­COM has a strong op­por­tu­ni­ty to make pos­i­tive strides to­wards re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and de­vel­op­ment that has been so long sought.