Analyst slams PM’s congratulatory message to Grenada PM

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

A re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst has ques­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s use of the slo­gan “Yel­low is the Code” fol­low­ing the Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress’ (NDC) land­slide elec­tion vic­to­ry in Grena­da, de­scrib­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion as “op­por­tunis­tic non­sense.”

Pe­ter Wick­ham yes­ter­day ar­gued that while Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Grena­da’s NDC share yel­low as a po­lit­i­cal colour, their lead­ers are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly worlds apart.

His com­ments fol­low Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage to Grena­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell on Thurs­day night, in which she in­clud­ed the hash­tag #Yel­low­Is­The­Code fol­low­ing the NDC’s re­sound­ing vic­to­ry.

“It’s op­por­tunis­tic non­sense, hon­est­ly,” Wick­ham told Guardian Me­dia.

“I think Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­der­stands that this is no yel­low wave. I mean, if there was a yel­low wave, we would have seen it in St Lu­cia. Clear­ly, there was not that.”

Wick­ham said the NDC has his­tor­i­cal­ly been a left-lean­ing po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar has po­si­tioned her­self firm­ly on the po­lit­i­cal right, par­tic­u­lar­ly through her re­la­tion­ship with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“I see noth­ing in Dick­on Mitchell’s lead­er­ship to sug­gest that he is as right-of-cen­tre as she is. Ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, he’s not with her.”

He point­ed to dif­fer­ences be­tween the two lead­ers on sev­er­al for­eign pol­i­cy mat­ters, in­clud­ing Cu­ba, US mil­i­tary strikes against sus­pect­ed drug ves­sels in the Caribbean and the in­stal­la­tion of Amer­i­can radar equip­ment.

“He was not with her on Cu­ba. He cer­tain­ly was not with her on the non­sense that the Amer­i­cans were do­ing, blow­ing boats and the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings,” Wick­ham said.

He ar­gued that Mitchell’s ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­so tak­en a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion on the radar is­sue, mak­ing any sug­ges­tion of shared po­lit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy mis­lead­ing.

“Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, the colour is yel­low,” he said, adding that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­lit­i­cal out­look was in­creas­ing­ly aligned with Trump.

Wick­ham al­so point­ed to un­suc­cess­ful par­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with yel­low in St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos, ar­gu­ing that the colour did not rep­re­sent an emerg­ing re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal move­ment.

Turn­ing to Thurs­day’s elec­tion, Wick­ham said he was not sur­prised by the scale of Mitchell’s vic­to­ry, hav­ing con­duct­ed polling ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month ear­li­er.

He said his re­search iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant swings to­wards the NDC, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12% in one con­stituen­cy.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted be­ing sur­prised that what ap­peared to be an ef­fec­tive cam­paign by the op­po­si­tion New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP) failed to trans­late in­to elec­toral gains.

Ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary re­sults, Mitchell’s NDC cap­tured 14 of Grena­da’s 15 par­lia­men­tary seats and se­cured more than 60% of the vote, earn­ing him a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive term.

The vic­to­ry strength­ened the NDC’s par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty from the nine seats it se­cured in 2022.

Wick­ham be­lieves Grena­di­ans were vot­ing to con­sol­i­date a cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive to the NNP, which dom­i­nat­ed the coun­try’s pol­i­tics un­der for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Mitchell.

He said con­cerns about the cost of liv­ing and ris­ing prices re­mained im­por­tant, but vot­ers were al­so demon­strat­ing con­fi­dence in the NDC as a vi­able gov­ern­ing al­ter­na­tive.

“The fact that he has been giv­en a sec­ond man­date says that Grena­di­ans feel that you should have more than one per­son or more than one gov­ern­ment able to pro­vide guid­ance,” Wick­ham said.