Winds of Change? What Winds of Change!
The Eastern Caribbean (EC) is in deep trouble!
There is so little knowledge and understanding of its political model.
Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the longest-serving EC Prime Minister (PM) of all time, was recently unseated, after 24 consecutive years in office in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Ralph’s fall sent political leaders and commentators into a frenzy explaining his defeat. In their frenzy, they missed two things.
One, extremely long tenures characterize the top leadership of the EC Model. It is not an exception.
Two, Ralph is not your classic EC PM. He does not follow the typical EC PM model. In contrast, Dominica’s PM Roosevelt Skerrit is. Skerrit exemplifies the EC approach. He is in his 21st consecutive year of office and currently holding his biggest ever parliamentary majority!
In my new book, The Eastern Caribbean Political Power Playbook: 10 Strategies Behind PM Skerrit’s Success, I concluded that: “Skerrit’s duration of tenure was extended as much by his scientific approach to leading as by an increasingly unscientific political Opposition.” (p. 36) The same applies to SVG.
The sense or nonsense that the Dominica Opposition made of Ralph’s political demise is proof of their unscientific approach to leading. They said Ralph was swept by winds of change! They put Skerrit on notice that a political category 5 hurricane wind was headed his way.
Opposition-affiliated radio station political talk show hosts, several Opposition political leaders, a Trinidad Government Minister, and the Saint Lucia Opposition Leader leaned heavily into the winds of change theory.
In their winds of change theory, first, they connected two tangentially connected dots, the Trinidad and Tobago and SVG elections. In TNT, a novice PM Stuart Young called a general election too soon and lost. In SVG, Ralph called an election too late and lost. Second, SVG, by its tiny size belongs to an EC political Model that is distinct from TNT, Barbados, Jamaica, and Guyana.
In science, the ability to predict is the ultimate test of soundness. With the Saint Lucia general election coming four days after SVG’s, on December 1, 2025, the Dominica Opposition was tested in its ability to predict. They predicted a defeat for the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP).
Their prediction bombed. SLP won a landslide 14-2-1 seats. Their prediction bombed because it was unscientific. The election results were not the result of winds of change.
The concept of ‘winds of change’ has a scientific meaning. It refers to a common cause of common effects, for example, European Decolonization causing a proliferation of newly independent states. And Eastern Caribbean countries began claiming their freedom from England. The timeline tells a story, Grenada, 1974, Dominica, 1978, St. Lucia 1979, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 1979, Antigua and Barbuda, 1981, and St. Kitts and Nevis, 1983. Or COVID causing financial and security crises, which transform into political crises.
In sum, Ralph’s defeat in SVG and the Saint Lucia Opposition’s defeat do not have a common cause, far less winds of change. Each was created by the local practices, even the culture of national political organizations created by their top leaders.
To replicate SVG’s Opposition victory, EC Oppositions must get scientific about how electoral victories are caused.
My Eastern Caribbean Political Power Playbook demonstrates that the foundation for scientific political behavior in the EC begins with recognizing and accepting that the EC constitutes a one-of-a-kind political model.
