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Ryan Ba­choo

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says out­go­ing St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves was re­duced to win­ning just a sin­gle seat, nar­row­ly cling­ing to po­lit­i­cal sur­vival. He sug­gest­ed that this dra­mat­ic elec­toral out­come, which saw Gon­salves’ Unit­ed Labour Par­ty suf­fer a 14-1 de­feat at the hands of Dr. God­win Fri­day’s New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, was part­ly in­flu­enced by the for­mer leader’s pub­lic crit­i­cisms of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

“Some of those neg­a­tive com­ments about Trinidad and To­ba­go came from the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines,” Mooni­lal said. “The peo­ple pun­ished him for re­fer­ring to Trinidad and To­ba­go and for con­demn­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and her ac­tions against drug traf­fick­ers. He paid the ul­ti­mate po­lit­i­cal price.”