On Thursday night, the Unity Labour Party, which holds power in St. Vincent (SVG), launched the Caribbean and Latin American Institute of Government and Politics.
During the party’s convention in March 2023, Gonsalves highlighted a perceived deficiency within the Unity Labour Party, namely its insufficient commitment towards conducting comprehensive political education, which he deemed important.
In his capacity as the political leader and Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, in delivering the keynote address during the launch event held in the capital city of Kingstown, expressed the party’s intention to conduct widespread political education across St. Vincent and the Grenadines, utilizing various media platforms. The objective of this initiative is to enhance citizens’ comprehension of ongoing developments within society and foster optimism for a promising future.
“The institute will focus on education, research, publication, and advocacy on governance, politics, and the political economy of our Caribbean and Latin American civilizations and their historical and contemporary manifestations, including their dialectical interconnections between and within both our Hemispheric civilizations and others globally.”
According to Gonsalves, the institute intends to evaluate information, knowledge, investigate, comprehend, and foster wisdom.
“Now If we succeed in part in these matters, we’ll make a great contribution generally to our public education and certainly to those in the party, including the leadership of the party. There is far too much misinformation, falsehoods, disinformation, vile propaganda, and ignorance that are paraded daily by backward Political forces that undermine our people’s interests and contaminate the body politic and society, and this institute is part of the creative resistance to those propagators of falsehood, misinformation, and disinformation”.
“The Institute is intended to be part of the corrective to these dark And ominous political forces of backwardness, reaction, and delusion and to be a beacon that shines light to unearth information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. It will lift the progressive consciousness of our people”, Gonsalves stated.
Gonsalves said it is imperative for the institute to broaden its scope beyond St. Vincent and the Grenadines and encompass Latin America and other relevant regional and hemispheric institutions associated with our nation.
“The Institute was founded to meet the growing need for a sufficient supply of true information, to aid knowledge, to aid in the development of a full understanding, and to apply wisdom to all matters touching and concerning the practice, that is, the theory and practice of government, politics, and the political economy of our country, our region, the hemisphere, and the world.”
The Institute, situated at the Unity Labour Party’s Murrays Road headquarters, is under the management of a sixteen-member board of directors led by Ralph Gonsalves. The executive director of the Institute is Augustine Ferdinand, a 29-year-old who is a graduate of the University of the West Indies.
The inaugural ceremony also included addresses given by Keisal Peters, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Benarva Browne, the Minister of Urban Development.
The event was organized with the overarching objective of fostering the development of future leaders in the present day.
