Michelle Loubon

"The an­ti-Gon­za­lves sen­ti­ment is ex­treme in St Vin­cent."

For­mer Vin­cent­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sir James Mitchell made this com­ment yes­ter­day. Mitchell is con­fi­dent the New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP) leader Arn­him Ul­ric Eu­stace will be elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter in­stead of cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­za­lves, when cit­i­zens of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) go to the polls to­mor­row. He is con­test­ing the con­stituen­cy of Ea�st Kingstown. Gon­salves will al­so face Ivan O'Neal of the SVG Green Par­ty. Mitchell said: "I think his chances are pos­i­tive in­deed. We had a mas­sive ral­ly in Vic­to­ria Park, on Thurs­day. The peo­ple are aim­ing to see Gon­za­lves back. "A lot of the slo­gans are 'Time For Ralph To Go.' "Enough No More. That has had res­onations through­out the coun­try. I am con­fi­dent we will win."

Mitchell said they al­so tried strate­gies to keep them out of the park but it was to no avail. Should they be elect­ed, Mitchell said: "We look for­ward to work­ing with oth­er re­gion­al gov­ern­ments." In the De­cem­ber 2005 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions Gon­salves and the ULP re­tained their 12-3 ma­jor­i­ty over the NDP. On the flip side, Bar­ba­di­an po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and poll­ster Pe­ter Wick­ham has pre­dict­ed a re­turn to pow­er for Gon­salves for a third con­sec­u­tive term in gov­ern­ment. Wick­ham's pre­dic­tion co­in­cid­ed with a ver­bal at­tack on the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty's out­go­ing Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ed­win Car­ring­ton by Mitchell for "med­dling" in St Vin­cent's pol­i­tics.

Mean­while, me­dia re­ports in SVG last week stat­ed that Gon­salves faces a stern test as the NDP has emerged as a very strong con­tender to pre­vent him from achiev­ing a third con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ry at the polls. Gon­za­lves said last week he was con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry be­cause of the sound poli­cies and vi­sion of his par­ty while in Gov­ern­ment. Ef­forts to con­tact Gon­za­lves yes­ter­day proved fu­tile.

–with re­port­ing by MALIS­SA LARA-PAT­TER­SON