The po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, Wat­son Duke, has sharply crit­i­cised St Vin­cent’s Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, for his re­cent re­marks about the San­dals re­sort projects.

“Mr Ralph Gon­salves, your state­ments are ill-in­formed, in­sen­si­tive, and rep­re­sent bad pol­i­tics,” Duke said. “Thank you, Mr Gon­salves, for rais­ing the top­ic. How­ev­er, let me cor­rect you: that small ho­tel you have in St Vin­cent is no match for what was promised and what will come to To­ba­go," he said.

The is­sue be­gan when Gon­salves, speak­ing at the launch of the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning’s bi­og­ra­phy at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day—from Duke’s per­spec­tive— seemed to mock To­ba­go. 

In his re­marks, Gon­salves spoke of the suc­cess of the new­ly opened US$250 mil­lion San­dals re­sort in St Vin­cent, which fea­tures 302 rooms, suites, and ca­banas. He men­tioned that the project was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed for To­ba­go, draw­ing laugh­ter from the au­di­ence.

Duke re­spond­ed, “What was promised to To­ba­go was a 750-room San­dals re­sort, pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate over half a bil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly. This is far be­yond what cur­rent­ly ex­ists in St Vin­cent.”

Duke al­leged that Gon­salves' com­ments might have been in­flu­enced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“While you cel­e­brate your San­dals in St Vin­cent, I want to ad­dress you and your col­league, Dr Row­ley. It seems this prompt was a slight to­wards To­ba­go. You im­ply that To­ba­go should feel slight­ed that San­dals didn’t come and should be ea­ger to wel­come any big ho­tel. That’s not the case. Every ho­tel that comes to To­ba­go will be eval­u­at­ed based on its mer­it and po­ten­tial rev­enue gen­er­a­tion for the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Duke said that To­ba­go wel­comes San­dals but un­der spe­cif­ic con­di­tions. “San­dals is wel­come to the is­land, but not un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment. San­dals can come to To­ba­go when we have a gov­ern­ment led by Wat­son Duke. We will ne­go­ti­ate with San­dals to en­sure that part of the pro­ject­ed $500 mil­lion an­nu­al rev­enue con­tributes to a sov­er­eign wealth fund for To­bag­o­ni­ans. We will se­cure the best jobs for To­bag­o­ni­ans in San­dals and en­sure fair treat­ment of all ho­tels on the is­land. We will not give San­dals pref­er­en­tial treat­ment while ne­glect­ing our home­grown ho­tels. Every­one must have equal op­por­tu­ni­ty in the tourism trade.”

The idea of a San­dals re­sort in To­ba­go was first pro­posed with much en­thu­si­asm, promis­ing to sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost the is­land’s tourism sec­tor and econ­o­my. The project en­vi­sioned a 750-room lux­u­ry re­sort that would at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors and cre­ate job op­por­tu­ni­ties and fi­nan­cial re­turns for those on the is­land. 

How­ev­er, the project faced nu­mer­ous chal­lenges and con­tro­ver­sies from the start.

Con­cerns about en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, land ac­qui­si­tion is­sues, and a lack of trans­paren­cy in ne­go­ti­a­tions led to sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal push­back. Most of that push­back came from then To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly mi­nor­i­ty Duke and present chief sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were fears that the re­sort might not de­liv­er the promised eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, but rather, pre­dom­i­nant­ly ben­e­fit for­eign in­vestors and the gov­ern­ment.

In 2020, San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al an­nounced it was pulling out of the pro­posed To­ba­go project. The com­pa­ny cit­ed var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing de­lays and un­cer­tain­ty in the project’s de­vel­op­ment. 

The then chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles had said back then that San­dals’ de­ci­sion was a sig­nif­i­cant blow to the hopes of many in To­ba­go who had an­tic­i­pat­ed the eco­nom­ic boost the re­sort would bring.