POLITICS: Caribbean Leaders Reach Accord To End St. Vincent Strife

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, May 5 2000 (IPS) - The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has agreed to hold early elections as part of an agreement to end mounting street protests organised by opposition parties.

“It is now agreed that fresh elections will be held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in March next year,” the country’s Prime Minister James Mitchell said Friday.

The agreement known as the “Grand Beach Accord” was hammered out in Grenada during six hours of negotiations between Prime Minister Mitchell, Opposition Leader Dr. Ralph Gonsalves and officials from the multi-party Organisation for Democracy and Development (ODD).

The ODD had been spearheading the political and industrial unrest in St. Vincent over the past two weeks in an attempt to force the Mitchell administration to resign.

The details of the accord have not been made public.

Gonsalves and the ODD were not immediately available for comment on the accord and were said to be preparing a statement on the new development. However, one important aspect of the agreement called for the holding of general elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in March next year.

Elections are constitutionally due in 2003, but the ODD and the other opposition forces had been demanding an early poll to protest the government’s decision to legislate increased pensions and gratuities for parliamentarians.

The last election was held in June 1998, with Mitchell’s New Democratic Party (NDP) winning a slender one-seat majority in the 15-member Parliament. The opposition United Labour Party (ULP) though won 55 percent of the popular votes cast in the polls.

The parties had been invited to the Grenadian capital St. Georges to discuss their differences with leaders of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) who ended their two-day summit Friday.

The six-hour meeting between OECS leaders, Gonsalves and Mitchell, was called after a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) mediating team of Trinidad Prime Minister Basdeo Panday and St. Kitts-Nevis leader Dr. Denzil Douglas failed to make any headway with the quarrelling factions.

Panday, on his return to Port of Spain, had warned of possible “violence” in the neighbouring Caribbean state if the demonstrations were not stopped. “We fear that if the protest continues, it will escalate into violence,” he said, noting that “hard lines were being taken in some quarters.”

Panday said during the mediating talks, the ODD had made it clear that they were only interested in the resignation of the government and a date for the next general elections, although the mediating team had “recommended that they meet and dialogue” with the government.

“I got the impression that with the hard-liners, that was not acceptable,” he said on his return to Port of Spain.

But Panday had dismissed suggestions that CARICOM was interfering in the internal problems of a member state, saying he believed the regional integration movement “had a duty to seek to help resolve an issue in a sister Caribbean country.”

“There is a growing feeling in CARICOM that we must act as family without fear of interfering in the affairs of member states,” he added.

The Vincentian government had been insisting that it would not step down, claiming it would be setting a dangerous precedent, not only for itself, but for the rest of CARICOM.

Mitchell had hoped that the Parliament would be the appropriate avenue for settling the differences between the parties and had even suggested that his administration was prepared to bring back the Pensions and Gratuities Bill to the legislative chambers with a view to it being rescinded.

But following the agreement reached in St. George’s, in a short statement Mitchell said he had opposed holding the polls this year.

“We bargained in the reduction of time, so it is now agreed that fresh elections will be held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in March next year,” Douglas told reporters Friday.

“We hope the essential services will no longer (attempt to) close down the country,” he said.

On Thursday, public workers including schoolteachers had stopped work in support of the call for Mitchell’s resignation. The action, which also included street demonstrations, forced the closure of a number of businesses on the island.

Following news of the agreement, businesses were reported to be slowly re-opening and public workers including teachers were reporting back for duty.