Friday elected as St Vincent’s new PM

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ap­peared set for a his­toric change in po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship last night as pre­lim­i­nary re­sults showed the New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP), led by God­win Fri­day, sweep­ing to a de­ci­sive vic­to­ry at the gen­er­al elec­tions, bring­ing to an end 25 con­sec­u­tive years of rule by the Uni­ty Labour Par­ty (ULP) un­der Dr Ralph Gon­salves.

Vot­ing took place across all 15 con­stituen­cies, with strong vot­er turnout re­port­ed na­tion­wide.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­sults showed the NDP se­cur­ing a clear par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty, re­flect­ing a strong man­date for change from the elec­torate.

Gon­salves and the ULP for­mal­ly con­ced­ed de­feat as prepa­ra­tions be­gan for an or­der­ly tran­si­tion of pow­er.

Fri­day, who re­tained his North­ern Grenadines seat, will be sworn in as the coun­try’s new Prime Min­is­ter.

He pledged to pri­ori­tise eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion, job cre­ation and gov­er­nance re­form.

“This elec­tion marks a new chap­ter for our na­tion,” he said in his vic­to­ry ad­dress. “The peo­ple have spo­ken, and we are ful­ly com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing their hopes and as­pi­ra­tions.”

Re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al elec­tion ob­servers, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Cari­com and oth­er mon­i­tor­ing bod­ies, com­mend­ed the process as free, fair and trans­par­ent, un­der­scor­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the tran­si­tion in the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic his­to­ry.