Five months after suffering a historic defeat in the November 2025 general election that ended its 25-year consecutive run in power, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ main opposition Unity Labour Party (ULP) has gathered its national leadership and grassroots supporters for its first post-election national council meeting in the capital city of Kingstown. The high-stakes gathering, which marked the party’s first major assembly of loyal members since the election, brought 617 delegates from every national constituency into the meeting hall, with an additional 150 passionate supporters gathering outside to demonstrate the party’s enduring grassroots strength, the ULP confirmed in an official press release.
During the meeting, several party figures who lost their parliamentary seats in the 2025 poll delivered keynote remarks to attendees. These included former North Leeward Member of Parliament Carlos James, who lost his re-election bid after just one term in office — a first for the constituency in decades, as well as Orando Brewster, who became the first ULP candidate to lose the Central Leeward seat in 30 years after falling just 49 votes short of victory in 2025, following a 503-vote win for him there in 2020. Former Senator Ashelle Morgan also delivered widely noted remarks to the assembled delegates.
The keynote address was delivered by Ralph Gonsalves, who serves as both Opposition Leader and ULP political leader, and was the only ULP candidate to win a parliamentary seat in the 2025 general election. Gonsalves delivered a rousing message of resilience and national reconciliation to the party’s rank-and-file members, urging attendees to reframe their election setback as a catalyst for future progress. He called for party members to prioritize grace and inclusivity, encouraging them to welcome voters who supported the winning New Democratic Party (NDP) in the election but have since grown dissatisfied with the new administration’s policies. Gonsalves emphasized that uniting with these disaffected voters would allow the ULP to work toward the betterment of all St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while also addressing and correcting the strategic mistakes the party made during last year’s election campaign.
The 2025 election delivered a landslide victory to the NDP, which secured 14 of the 15 available parliamentary seats and won over 10,000 more popular votes than the incumbent ULP. This result marked the most lopsided election win for any party in the country since 1989, when the NDP won a clean sweep of all 15 parliamentary seats.
During his address, Gonsalves also highlighted the work of the ULP’s newly activated People’s Defence Committee (PDC), a body established to process and advocate for citizen complaints against the new NDP administration. Gonsalves noted that the PDC is already providing critical support to two vulnerable groups: residents struggling to keep up with payments for land sold by the current government, and public sector workers who have been unfairly terminated from their roles after years of service, many targeted for their past association with the ULP. Official complaint forms are now available at ULP headquarters, and the party has assembled a cross-disciplinary team of legal experts and trade union representatives to assist complainants, Gonsalves confirmed.
The PDC’s activation comes amid a ongoing controversy over last-minute land distribution carried out by the ULP cabinet in the days immediately before the 2025 election. On the same day as the ULP national council meeting, NDP Minister of Land Management Andrew John announced that the administration is nearly finished with a review of the distribution of more than 150 land parcels carried out by the outgoing ULP. John noted that while thousands of residents had applied for land through official channels, not all recipients of the pre-election land allocations were formal applicants, and urged the public to remain patient as the review concludes.
At the close of the national council meeting, the ULP announced that it would convene a special meeting in June to set a firm date for a national party convention planned for later this year. The party also confirmed that the meeting had concluded with a major announcement outlining the ULP’s future trajectory, though it offered no additional details on the content of the announcement. In a closing statement, the ULP noted that the high turnout and clear strategic direction emerging from the Kingstown meeting signal that the party has re-energized following its election defeat, and remains deeply committed to advocating for the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as it rebuilds ahead of future electoral cycles.