Results from recent General Elections in Trinidad & Tobago (T&T), Saint Vincent & The Grenadines (SVG) and Saint Lucia have thrown-up much Food for Thought and offered new answers to old questions about where Eastern Caribbean politics is today and heading tomorrow.
And once again, in Saint Lucia’s case, History is teaching that in politics, it’s not just projects that matter, but the people they’re intended for.
Political parties everywhere have won or lost elections on that basis, leading to the emergence of the concept of Labour Parties championing the cause of the ‘Working People’ and ‘Putting People First’ when elected.
Today’s Caribbean Labour Parties emerged from the joint regional protests by workers that led to the 1938 Revolutions across the British West Indies (BWI), against the bad conditions they worked under with direct British control, paid starving wages and unable to live better in lands of their birth.
The 1938 revolutions (as described by Saint Lucia’s W. Arthur Lewis in seminal first book ‘Labour in the West Indies (1939)’ ignited national political movements across the BWI: from British Guiana, British Honduras and The Bahamas to Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts-Nevis and Anguilla, Saint Vincent & The Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago.
Those revolutions forced the British to yield to the workers’ demands, including rights to establish trades unions and political parties – and eventually the Right to Vote (Adult Suffrage).
It’s against that background that the unions (like the St. Lucia Workers Union) were formed in every colony, which in turn united to create political parties across the region ahead of the first elections between 1950 and 1951, when – for the first time — born-and-bred West Indians no-longer needed to own property to qualify to vote.
Thus the St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) and other like-minded West Indies Labour Parties were born, created by trade unions and backed by workers, seeking political office to implement policies to benefit the majority being treated like minorities by the colonial elites.
Thereafter, the SLP and other Labour Parties won every election every five years, because, with whatever limited power they had within the wider colonial structure, they influenced policies that addressed the social problems workers and their families faced.
The Labour Parties, in the process, becoming impregnable political forces, most generally supporting ‘socialism’, but since 1983 (after the fall of the Grenada Revolution), political parties of the Right and Centre have dominated the Caribbean’s political landscape, reversing earlier social advances and accelerating the decline of regional unity.
Saint Lucia was no exception.
The UWP and SLP exchanged places in office many times in the 12 General Elections since Saint Lucia’s 1ndependence in 1979, including three consecutive five-year terms accorded each party, with similar 11-6 majorities, between 2006 and 2021.
The SLP broke the revolving-door governance cycle and won 13 of the 17 seats in 2021, with two winning Independents joining the SLP in parliament and the new cabinet, leaving UWP with only two elected MPs.
The Saint Lucia electorate would further confirm the break of the 15-year revolving-door cycle in 2025, by re-electing the SLP with a lead of 14 seats won, plus the two independents, leaving the UWP with only one MP – its leader, Allen Chastanet.
Analysts, commentators and observers continue to offer myriad conclusions from the SLP alliance’s repeated overwhelming defeat of the UWP (16-1), but all agree that it boiled-down to a national response to the policies implemented by the Philip J. Pierre administration in the four years between 2021 and 2025, under the theme ‘Putting People First’.
That original Labour concept (of ‘Putting People First’) was at the root of the Pierre administration’s every policy, touching people everywhere island-wide through social and economic policies that touched citizens of all walks of life where it matters most.
Delivering on its 2021 manifesto promises, the SLP contested in 2025 with a checklist of achievements pursued through legislation to ensure they benefited all.
Under Pierre’s leadership as Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, Minister for Finance, Economic Development, National Security and The Youth Economy, the SLP turned-around an inherited economy mismanaged during the COVID pandemic and suffering from the effects of Ukraine War sanctions and Supply Chain challenges.
Take the following 20 random samples of SLP Government decisions in the thematic and practical realm of ‘Putting People First!’:
• Presiding over three successive years of economic growth
• Keeping the economy on a positive growth trajectory
• Paying outstanding increases and further increasing Public Servants’ wages
• Introducing a National Minimum Wage
• Increasing payments to Government Pensioners
• Lowering Unemployment (to unprecedented single-digits)
• Increasing Public and Private Sector Employment-generation and Profitable Possibilities
• Introducing a successful Youth Economy Agency (YEA)
• Reduction of International Debt
• Payments of outstanding Domestic Government Debts
• Increasing allowances for Elderly Persons relying on government assistance
• Ensuring better health services
• Completing construction of the St. Jude Hospital
• Providing more scholarships and eliminating student enrolment fees
• Absorbing higher fuel and energy bills
• Subsidizing basic food costs
• Lowering prices on Building Materials
• Expanding Housing Initiatives
• Caring for Pregnant Women and assisting Single Parents
• Creating a Ministry for Persons with Disabilities
The SLP’s achievements record had won the December 1 poll long before Prime Minister Pierre announced it in November, the three-week campaign and its 2025-2030 Manifesto only serving to reiterate what most people (including many UWPs) had already long concluded: PM Pierre and the SLP-led alliance deserved a second term — and which they gracefully awarded.
But ultimately, the SLP was able to win like it did last Monday because People are Human and will always respond positively to what makes them actually feel their interests are being put first — above and before all else.
Saint Lucians have again reminded the world of the simple but profound reality: ‘Putting People First!’ is always possible, but also always depends on people recognizing and electing parties showing genuine, people-cantered national political leadership.