标签： Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

A longstanding political and legal figure in St. Vincent and the Grenadines has delivered a blistering rebuke to top leaders of the opposition Unity Labour Party (ULP), arguing they have forfeited any moral standing to condemn the current government’s planned constitutional amendments over ongoing election legal challenges.

Jomo Thomas, a former Speaker of the House of Assembly, practicing lawyer, journalist, and one-time New Democratic Party (NDP) electoral candidate, laid out his case in an interview with iWitness News on Wednesday, calling out ULP Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves, his son and former ULP Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves, and other senior ULP figures for their recent sanctimonious rhetoric about constitutional respect.

The current dispute traces back to last November’s general election, when after two decades in power under Ralph Gonsalves, the ULP was decisively voted out of office by the electorate. The ruling NDP, now led by Prime Minister Godwin Friday, took office, but the ULP has since filed two high-stakes election petitions challenging the legitimacy of Friday’s win in Northern Grenadines and Finance Minister Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble’s victory in East Kingstown. The ULP argues the pair were ineligible to run for office because they hold Canadian citizenship, a fact that has been public since before they first stood for election.

In response to the pending challenge, scheduled for trial in June, the NDP government has proposed a constitutional amendment to clarify the legal definition of “foreign power” to resolve eligibility questions. The ULP has decried this move as an unconstitutional power grab to protect the sitting government, framing the change as a threat to St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ founding governing document. Thomas, however, says this outrage rings hollow given the ULP’s own long history of disregarding constitutional norms when it held power.

Thomas points to a 2015 parallel that exposes the ULP leadership’s hypocrisy. After that year’s election, the NDP filed its own election petitions challenging ULP seat wins, and when the courts agreed to hear the case, Ralph Gonsalves, who was still prime minister at the time, publicly dismissed the court’s role in determining election outcomes. In 2017 comments that still stand on record, Gonsalves argued that only voters, not judges, get to decide who represents the public, saying “The courthouse doesn’t determine who represents you… Judges do not decide who are your representatives.” Now, Thomas notes, Gonsalves is insisting the court must be the final arbiter a direct contradiction of his own previous stance.

Beyond this flip-flop, Thomas details a series of past actions by the Gonsalves-led ULP administration that he says amount to direct assaults on the constitution. He cites the Public Administration Act, which Ralph Gonsalves championed and Camillo Gonsalves supported, a law that Thomas argues improperly stripped the independent Public Service Commission of its constitutional authority over public sector hiring. Thomas’s own legal chambers have won multiple court rulings that found the ULP administration violated the constitution during its time in office. He also points to violations of the Finance Act related to unregulated special warrants, documented in a 2020 article he wrote, as well as the ULP’s maneuvering to block an NDP no-confidence motion when the party held a narrow 8-7 parliamentary majority.

Thomas acknowledges that he, as speaker at the time, allowed the ULP’s procedural gambit to block the no-confidence debate, but says he was pressured into the decision by Camillo Gonsalves, who argued that standing orders allowed the amendment to kill the motion. Thomas now says that was a mistake: standing orders are subsidiary legislation that cannot override the constitutional requirement to hold votes on no-confidence motions, a fact the ULP leadership knew full well when they pushed the maneuver through to protect their government.

While Thomas rejects the ULP’s moral authority to comment on constitutional respect, he does not fully back the NDP’s planned amendment either. He agrees with the ULP’s top leadership’s prediction that the court will throw out their election petitions, and says the NDP’s push to amend the constitution ahead of the June trial signals unnecessary insecurity about the legal case. Thomas confirms that the government only needs a two-thirds parliamentary majority to pass the amendment, but argues that moving forward with the change is unnecessary, even as it remains within the government’s power to do so.

From the corridors of Washington D.C., where global financial leaders have gathered for the annual World Bank Spring Meetings, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), the Honourable Dr. Godwin Friday, has laid out his administration’s core priorities: delivering tangible progress to the people of SVG, expanding high-quality, well-paying employment, reducing the crippling national debt to unlock domestic investment, and ensuring that policy gains directly translate into higher incomes for ordinary citizens.

Accompanying Friday on this trip are Foreign Minister Bramble and a cohort of senior government officials, who have joined multilateral discussions focused on small island developing states. The Prime Minister emphasized that across the entire Caribbean region, robust employment is the foundation of national resilience. During the 2023 general election campaign, his administration made a clear promise: people will always take precedence over prestige projects. Every government initiative, he says, is rooted in the single objective of improving living standards for all Vincentians.

For small island economies like SVG, Friday explained, employment is far more than a source of household income—it is the backbone of social stability, post-shock economic recovery, and long-term public and private sector confidence. This year’s Spring Meetings theme, “Building Prosperity Through Policy,” aligns closely with SVG’s domestic agenda: for small vulnerable states, consistent, predictable policy acts as critical economic infrastructure, enabling the government to build the physical and social systems needed to serve citizens. Friday acknowledged that his government inherited a severe economic crisis from the previous administration, but confirmed that targeted corrective measures are already underway to reverse the downturn and put the country on a sustainable path forward.

This year’s Washington meetings are taking place against a backdrop of heightened global uncertainty, with the spillover effects of ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East rippling through global markets and small economies alike. Friday noted that all nations have a shared responsibility to mitigate the impact of these shocks on vulnerable populations. A central focus of his delegation’s work this week has been advancing efforts to address the unsustainable debt burden accumulated by the previous SVG government. Reducing this debt, he argues, will free up critical fiscal space to invest in domestic social and economic programs, unlock the untapped potential of individual Vincentians and local businesses, drive job growth, raise living standards, and address the deep-seated social challenges the country faces.

No nation can tackle these challenges alone, the Prime Minister stressed. SVG remains fully committed to deepening collaboration with regional and international partners, including the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Washington-based multilateral development agencies, and longstanding international partners like Taiwan. This week, a joint ceremonial drill between the Taiwanese Navy honor guard and the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force is set to take place, a public demonstration of the strength of the bilateral relationship. Though Friday regrets he cannot be present for the event in SVG, he says it embodies the core mission of his trip to Washington: working with all willing partners to advance national development.

Friday says there is abundant reason for cautious optimism across the Caribbean. The region shares a unified sense of purpose and a growing recognition that collective action is the most effective path to improving lives across all island nations. He offered a metaphor to capture this collective potential: during the Christmas yachting season, SVG’s coastal waters are dotted with the lights of visiting vessels, turning the bay into a glowing sight reminiscent of a Christmas tree. This scene, he noted, is a reminder that the Caribbean’s natural and cultural assets are a shared regional resource, and that instead of competing for investment and tourism, islands should pursue complementary diversification that lifts all regional economies.

If governments, local populations, and international development partners remain aligned and united, Friday concluded, sound policy will indeed translate into shared prosperity. This prosperity will be measured not just by gross domestic product growth, but by the creation of more jobs, expanded dignity and opportunity for all Caribbean people.

This op-ed reflects the personal views of the author, and does not necessarily represent the editorial position of iWitness News. The outlet accepts opinion article submissions via email.

A prominent Saint Vincent and the Grenadines political figure has launched a sharp rebuke of the incumbent New Democratic Party (NDP) administration’s sudden push to amend the national constitution, arguing the last-minute change is a self-interested move to shield two top ruling party lawmakers from ongoing election challenges rather than a genuine effort at legislative reform.

Jomo Thomas, a former House of Assembly speaker, trained lawyer, veteran journalist and longtime political commentator who once ran as a Unity Labour Party (ULP) candidate before splitting from the opposition in 2019, shared his critical assessment in an exclusive interview with iWitness News. Thomas, who stepped down from the speaker’s post in early 2020, made clear that despite his break with the ULP, he remains convinced the opposition’s election petitions challenging Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Foreign Minister Fitzgerald Bramble will ultimately fail in court. That, he argues, makes the government’s hasty amendment push all the more unnecessary.

The controversy stems from two separate election petitions filed by the ULP’s unsuccessful 2025 general election candidates Carlos Williams and Luke Browne. Williams ran in Northern Grenadines, while Browne contested the East Kingstown seat; both challengers failed to unseat Friday and Bramble, who secured their sixth consecutive and second five-year terms respectively, with the ULP having never won either constituency. The petitions center on the fact that Friday and Bramble hold dual Saint Vincentian and Canadian citizenship, a status that opponents argue violates eligibility requirements for parliamentary office.

After the Order Paper for next Tuesday’s parliamentary sitting was distributed to lawmakers earlier this week, opposition leader Ralph Gonsalves first accused the NDP of rushing the constitutional change to protect its two top officials. Thomas has echoed that critique, going further to argue that the amendment reveals a hidden lack of confidence in the government’s own legal case, despite Friday’s public dismissal of the petitions as “frivolous” after the first court hearing.

Thomas pointed out that the constitutional section targeted for change is not an entrenched provision, meaning it does not require a two-thirds parliamentary majority or a public referendum to revise. With the NDP holding a dominant 14-1 majority in the 15-seat parliament, the amendment can be passed with a simple majority vote. He noted that if the NDP’s goal was actually to modernize dual citizenship rules for all elected office — a legitimate policy objective — the government could have crafted a broad, forward-looking reform that would allow any native-born Vincentian to run for parliament regardless of what foreign citizenship they hold.

Instead, Thomas argues the amendment is narrowly tailored to provide short-term protection specifically for Friday and Bramble. “This is not broad, inclusive reform — this is an insurance policy for two of the NDP’s most senior leaders,” Thomas explained. “If the government truly believed their legal position was solid, why would they need to change the law retroactively to insulate themselves from a court ruling? This move makes it look like they don’t actually believe their own claims that the case is frivolous.”

The former speaker also raised red flags over the proposed change’s retroactive scope, which would apply back to SVG’s independence in 1979, a provision he calls deeply troubling and unnecessary. “Constitutional changes should lay the groundwork for the future, not rewrite the rules of the past to benefit sitting officials,” he said. “I am convinced Friday and Bramble would prevail if the case is decided on its legal merits under the existing constitution. The uniqueness of our constitutional framework means the opposition’s cited precedents from St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, and Australia simply do not apply here. Letting the court issue a ruling would permanently settle all the ongoing debate about dual citizenship eligibility for high office, which is exactly what we need.”

Thomas also questioned the justification for Friday retaining his Canadian citizenship while serving as prime minister, arguing claims that the status is needed for future health and social security benefits ring hollow. “Former prime ministers in this country already have full access to taxpayer-funded top-tier health care, a benefit that past leaders including Arnhim Eustace and James Mitchell have already used,” he noted. “There is no justifiable reason for a sitting head of government to maintain citizenship in another country, and the public has a right to ask why this is such a priority for the prime minister.”

Beyond the substance of the change, Thomas criticized the NDP’s process for pushing the amendment through parliament. Reports indicate the government plans to complete all three readings of the bill in a single sitting, cutting off any opportunity for meaningful public input or robust legislative debate. “Changing your country’s constitution is one of the most consequential actions a parliament can take, and doing it in a single day without public discussion does a disservice to democratic governance,” Thomas added.

Four months after the New Democratic Party (NDP) swept the Unity Labour Party (ULP) out of power after 25 years in government, the newly-minted opposition is preparing to escalate its political pushback against the ruling administration, according to opposition leader and former prime minister Ralph Gonsalves.

Gonsalves, who retained his own parliamentary seat in the November 2024 election as the sole ULP representative to win office, laid out the case for intensified opposition action during an appearance on his party’s owned broadcaster Star Radio Monday. The opposition leader highlighted three core areas of alleged mismanagement by the new government that are driving its planned escalation: widespread dismissals of public sector and allied workers, irregular payment of salaries and benefits to multiple groups of workers, and controversial actions related to state land transactions.

Among the land disputes Gonsalves cited was a case involving a female buyer who entered into a land purchase agreement with the previous ULP administration and submitted an initial down payment in October 2024, just weeks before the election. Since the NDP took office, the buyer has been blocked from making any further installment payments on the property, effectively freezing the transaction. Gonsalves said he intends to coordinate with Saboto Caesar, the former ULP lands minister and an attorney by training, to pursue legal redress for aggrieved parties like this buyer, noting that binding contracts are being disregarded by the new government.

“NDP is pushing forward policies that harm working-class and low-income people, from freezing land purchases to holding back paychecks,” Gonsalves said, criticizing the government’s slow response to emerging national issues. He specifically called out the administration’s delayed reaction to market disruptions linked to the Iran conflict, noting it took more than a month for officials to announce any policy response—an action that ultimately only amounted to creating a new task force rather than implementing immediate solutions.

The NDP government has formally established a task force to address the outstanding salary and economic issues raised by the opposition, with the group scheduled to deliver its preliminary recommendations to Prime Minister Godwin Friday’s cabinet on April 24. Friday has so far declined to publicly comment on potential policy changes, stating that he does not wish to prejudge the task force’s findings. Gonsalves dismissed this approach as a classic delaying tactic, arguing that after four months in office, the NDP administration has failed to deliver any meaningful action on key domestic challenges including rising consumer prices, worker payment issues, and land rights.

“There is little to no forward momentum in the country right now,” Gonsalves said. “After four months, all we have is firings, unresolved land disputes, late and missing paychecks, and zero action on the cost of living. This government is just kicking the can down the road and hoping problems disappear on their own.”

To counter what the opposition calls ongoing governmental mismanagement, Gonsalves confirmed that the ULP will ramp up public and political pressure, and pursue legal action in court to resolve disputes over land and contractual agreements reached under the previous administration.

A major political showdown has erupted in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as opposition leader Ralph Gonsalves announced Wednesday that his Unity Labour Party (ULP) will mount both legal challenges and widespread political resistance against the ruling New Democratic Party (NDP)’s planned constitutional amendments, set for parliamentary debate next Tuesday.

Gonsalves, speaking on ULP-owned Star Radio, framed the proposed changes as an unprecedented power grab, saying “Today is a day where we have to commence our resistance to this New Democratic Party (NDP) dictatorship.” The amendments, he explained, are directly tied to an ongoing election petition challenging the eligibility of Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Foreign Minister Dwight “Fitz” Bramble to hold parliamentary seats.

The petition was filed by the two ULP candidates who ran against Friday and Bramble in the November 2024 general election, where the ULP—after 25 consecutive years in power—was ousted in a landslide result that left the party holding just one of parliament’s 15 seats. The ULP’s core argument rests on a longstanding constitutional provision that bars candidates who have voluntarily pledged allegiance to a foreign power. Friday and Bramble have openly acknowledged they hold Canadian citizenship acquired through voluntary naturalization, a status the opposition says violates the nation’s founding charter.

The two incumbent NDP politicians represent Northern Grenadines and East Kingstown, constituencies the ULP has never won in electoral history. Friday has served as a Member of Parliament since 2001, while Bramble first won his seat in 2020.

In response, the NDP argues that the constitution only requires parliamentary candidates to hold Commonwealth citizenship—a category that includes Canada—meaning Friday and Bramble’s election is fully legal. NDP Senator Jemalie John told local outlet Hot 97 FM Wednesday that the amendments are merely intended to clear up existing ambiguity in the constitution, not to interfere with the pending court case. “If there were no ambiguity, we would not have this case before the court right now,” John said, noting the central unresolved question is whether Commonwealth nations like Canada qualify as “foreign powers or states” under existing constitutional language.

According to Gonsalves, the proposed changes target Section 26(5) of the 1979 constitution, which outlines candidacy disqualifications. The amendments would add a formal definition of what constitutes a foreign power, and explicitly remove any reference to allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign state as a disqualifying factor. Most controversially, Gonsalves says the changes would be made retroactive to 1979, when the current constitution first took effect.

The court has already held an initial case management hearing in March, and has scheduled full legal arguments for July 28 through 30. Gonsalves pointed out that on the same morning as the initial hearing, Friday dismissed the petition as frivolous and a waste of judicial resources—a claim that rings hollow, the opposition leader argues, given the NDP’s push to rewrite the constitution to resolve the politicians’ legal vulnerability.

“Friday and Bramble, through their lawyers at the case management hearing, agreed that they are Canadian citizens and they have Canadian passports,” Gonsalves said. “The only questions that remain are legal ones, central among which is ‘Is Canada a foreign power or state?’ The second issue was that Friday and Bramble do have an allegiance, obedience and adherence to this foreign power state called Canada.”

Gonsalves argued that Friday and Bramble’s legal team’s push for the constitutional amendments amounts to an “insurance policy” after their initial argument that Commonwealth nations do not qualify as foreign powers failed to fully resolve their legal risk. He also highlighted a key point of NDP hypocrisy in the fight: a 2009 constitutional reform proposal that included a provision to allow dual citizens to run for office was opposed and ultimately voted down by the public, with the NDP—including Friday himself—leading the campaign against the measure.

“This is a political battle of massive proportions,” Gonsalves said, adding that the amendments are clearly intended to benefit the ruling party’s sitting leaders. In a dramatic appeal to end what he called the NDP’s “madness,” Gonsalves called on St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Governor-General to intervene by refusing to grant royal assent to the bills if they pass parliament.

A looming constitutional debate in St. Vincent and the Grenadines has sparked political friction between the ruling New Democratic Party (NDP) and the opposition Unity Labour Party (ULP), with a sitting government senator pushing back against opposition claims that the proposed clarification of the nation’s constitution is an underhanded, last-minute power grab.

The core of the political dispute centers on two pending election petitions filed by the ULP, which challenge the eligibility of sitting Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Foreign Minister Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble to retain their seats won in the November 2025 general election. The ULP has argued that the pair violated constitutional requirements for parliamentary candidates by holding citizenship of a foreign power, a charge that stems from longstanding ambiguity around how the constitution defines the term “foreign power”.

Government Senator Jemalie John, a practicing lawyer, laid out the administration’s position during an interview with Hot 97 FM on Wednesday, emphasizing that the planned parliamentary action to clarify the constitutional language will have no impact on the pending court proceedings. John stressed that the two petitions remain fully active before the judiciary, and even if the amendment includes a retroactivity clause, it will ultimately fall to the courts to decide whether the new language applies to the ongoing case, leaving the opposition fully free to pursue their legal challenge.

John rejected opposition claims that the NDP rushed the amendment through without public transparency, noting that the plan became public through standard parliamentary procedure: the official Order Paper for the upcoming April 21 parliamentary sitting was circulated to all legislators one week in advance, as required by law, making the planned debate a matter of public record from that point.

He framed the ULP’s objections as a political power play, noting that the NDP secured a landslide 14-1 victory over the ULP in the November election, ending 25 years of ULP rule. The opposition’s end goal, John argued, is to overturn the results of two constituencies where voters overwhelmingly reelected Friday (to a sixth consecutive term) and Bramble (to a second five-year term) and install the defeated ULP candidates in their place. “Their mission is to have our prime minister and our foreign minister replaced with Carlos Williams and Luke Browne,” John stated, pointing out that the ULP has never won either of the two seats in its entire political history. “They essentially want to impose someone on the people that the people never voted for. Ethically and morally, they are wrong.”

Addressing claims that the amendment is a self-serving measure, John countered that the move is designed to protect St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ democratic process. “If the people went out in an election and voted for a particular candidate, how could it be ethically, morally or legally right that the votes of thousands of Vincentians should be disregarded, thrown away, and there’s somebody then sitting in Parliament represent them who they never voted for in the first place?” he asked. “Ensuring that that democratic right is protected, it could never be appropriately described as self-serving. If anything, it protects the right of the Vincentian people and protects a democratic franchise.”

On the substance of the amendment, John clarified that the proposal does not rewrite the constitution entirely, but only resolves existing ambiguity that directly led to the court case being filed. The key point of contention is how to define a “foreign power”: some interpretations hold that any dual citizenship, even with another Commonwealth nation, disqualifies a candidate, while others argue that Commonwealth countries do not count as foreign powers under the constitution. John noted that proponents of the latter interpretation often cite a landmark case from St. Kitts and Nevis, but St. Kitts’ constitution is explicitly different from St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ charter, making a direct application of that ruling inappropriate.

John also reaffirmed the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches, arguing that when constitutional ambiguity exists, it is the role of parliament – not the courts – to clarify the law. “The court is not there to make laws. The court is not there to change laws or to repeal laws. That rests with the parliament. The court is there to interpret the laws that parliament passes,” he explained. “If the role and function of the Parliament is to make, change and repeal laws, then we should not say, ‘Oh, well, let the judges do it.’ Parliament is the law-making body of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and it will continue to act on that responsibility to clarify policy that serves the public good.”

John added that the core policy question at hand is whether native-born Vincentians who acquire a second citizenship, including through marriage, should be barred from serving in parliament, a question he said will be fully debated during the April 21 parliamentary session.

The pending election petitions have already gone through a case management hearing in early March, with the next procedural hearing scheduled for May 19. The trial for the two challenges is set to begin on July 28, with three days allocated for proceedings.