‘I Am Now An Old Man, But I Am Still A Rebel’

On Sunday, the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) held its 74th annual conference of delegates. The conference was held at the Belle Vue Combined School in Vieux Fort and featured guest speaker Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. During his presentation, Gonsalves explained that his Unity Labour Party (ULP) and its predecessor the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Labour Party had strong fraternal links with the SLP. “As a young man, I was a rebel because there was, from the time I was a youth, a lot to be rebellious about. I am now an old man but I am still a rebel and I cannot stop being a rebel because there are many things still to rebel about,” Gonsalves told his audience. “Although we have made immense progress in our Caribbean civilisation, there are things which we still need to address,” he explained. According to the Vincentian leader, as Small Island developing states there are inherent vulnerabilities. “And in an age of rampaging man-made climate change, those vulnerabilities are more problematic and despite our strengths and possibilities, we have weaknesses and limitations and the contemporary political economy is very unfair to small island developing states,”...