No Genuine Government Commitment to Sport in SVG
All eligible adult Vincentians, of all walks of life, are invited to go to the polls to actively participate in the nation’s general elections on Thursday 27 November 2025. Parliament, the country’s legislature, has officially been prorogued. This latter act allowed the contesting political parties to begin their respective campaigns, in the hope of garnering enough constituency victories to be the designated next government of St Vincent and the Grenadines, opening yet another chapter in the history of the nation.
Eligible Vincentians are currently being inundated with feverish campaigns at the constituency and national levels, all aimed to convince voters that they can deliver a better St Vincent and the Grenadines if elected to office. Unfortunately, members of the political party that wins the right to form government are the only ones who will have the opportunity to make good on some of what they have promised since the government wields control over decisions in respect of governance of the nation.
The history of politics of St Vincent and the Grenadines, as is the case across the English-Speaking Caribbean, reveals the unfortunate fact that despite promises made about facilitating genuine democracy and more so, consultative democracies, the political [party that forms government show no commitment to its realisation. The control that the winning party has over the public purse allows for the establishment and entrenchment of benevolent dictatorships in which the national economic pie is deliberately weighted in favour of the party’s faithful.
It is not by accident that in every English-speaking Caribbean country it is the norm for politicians to emerge from their political sojourn with ruling regimes, decidedly better off economically than when they entered it. This is the reason that some of our countries do not introduce Integrity Legislation during their tenure in office.
It is also the norm that during election campaigns the incumbent political party boasts of the record books detailing their achievements. What is often done is the electorate is not given any explanation for the failures nor for omissions.
The reality in St Vincent and the Grenadines is that sport is used as a major tool, packaged as enticing packages, designed to win the votes of the nation’s youths. For the most part, the nation’s young people are taken for granted, easily ‘fooled’ by promises of better things to come. More recently, the granting of sport ambassadorships, is intended to be a grand promise. However, there are no stories of significance of any designated sport ambassador of his/her role in the nation since having been appointed.
Unfortunately, close analysis of the performance of the government of the past several years reveals a comprehensive lack of understanding of sport as a vehicle of personal and national development and hance, the absence of any plan for sport.
Why sport?
Physical activity is the foundation of engagement in sport. This is the reason why we. Have been appealing, through this Column, for the past 30-odd years, for our nation to take the time to introduce physical literacy as an important ingredient in personal development.
We have consistently appealed for the government to locate physical literacy alongside literacy and numeracy as the foundational pillars of the education formation of every Vincentian child.
After more than 24 years in office, the government has consistently failed St Vincent and the Grenadines in respect of acknowledging the importance of, introduction and implementation of a comprehensive programme on physical literacy.
The International Physical Literacy Association, in May 2014, defined the concept as follows, “Physical literacy is the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life.”
For its part the Australian Sports Commission explains, “Physical literacy involves holistic lifelong learning through movement and physical activity. It delivers physical, psychological, social and cognitive health and wellbeing benefits.” It further states, “Physical literacy is about building the skills, knowledge and behaviours that give us the confidence and motivation to lead active lives.”
Despite repeated pleading, we have failed to educate our entire nation of the value of physical literacy as an essential building block of every human being. It is also the foundation upon which physical education and sport are built in any given society.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines physical education as “instruction in the development and care of the body ranging from simple calisthenic exercises to a course of study providing training in hygiene, gymnastics, and the performance and management of athletic games.”
The Association of Applied Sport Psychology defines sport as “all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organized participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.”
There is therefore alignment of the concepts, physical literacy, physical education and sport. It is this alignment that we have been unable to facilitate in our education programme in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Practising sport has been found to bring immense benefits to those involved.
Sport. Brings people together to engage in a common activity. It therefore engenders friendship amongst the participants, which could be lifelong. It also encourages an understanding of the importance of cooperation and teamwork in the process of pursuing common goals
Sport instils positive values in practitioners. These include respect, sharing and caring for others as they push themselves to succeed in the achievement of established goals. Practitioners of sport also learn individual and collective discipline, understanding and accepting winning and losing whilst enjoying participation.
Engagement in the practice of sport helps individuals with an understanding of good nutritional practices and facilitates productivity in all endeavours.
In essence, sport, founded upon physical literacy and physical education is a critical element in the holistic development of the individual, the family, the community and the nation, anywhere in the world.
The unfortunate Vincentian experience
During the period, 7 – 9 November 2025, the St Vincent and the Grenadines Swimming Federation (SVGSF), hosted the 33rd OECS Swimming Championships, under the aegis of World Aquatics, the international governing body for the sport and the St Vincent and the Grenadines Olympic Committee respectively. Remarkably, the local federation stepped up to the plate to host the Championships back-to-back, 2024 and 2025, to ensure that there was no break nor loss of momentum in the sport in the subregion because one designated country could not host at the time.
It should be noted that this was the fourth occasion in nine years that the local federation has hosted the OECS Swimming Championships.
Over the past several years, the SVGSF has constructed a six-lane swimming pool from what was once a family pool of about 15 metres in length and 10 metres wide. There is international approved equipment in place, and the sport has brought to the fore, Carifta and OECS medallists, and heightened interest amongst children and their parents, as well as enthusiastic supporters. The pool and all its contents belong to the SVGSF.
Each time the national swim team wins medals at Carifta, government ministers are at the airport to celebrate their achievements. However, in stark contrast, not a single government minister has ever attended any of the four editions of the OECS Swimming Championships hosted here in St Vincent and the Grenadines, despite having been invited to each edition. There has also never been an apology or explanation for their absence, even as successive ministers boast of their own attempts at forging some sort of approach to sport tourism. Interestingly, on each occasion that this country has hosted the OECS Swimming Championships, the number of athletes, coaches, parents and supporters accompanying teams have make a significant contribution to our tourism product. Unfortunately, this does not feature in our sport development thrust that has been touted in one platform after another by those who hold office in government.
The growth and successes of the SVGSF have not led to any interest being shown in developing a more developed facility for the sport. Decades have passed with only murmurs of the possibility of one day providing an international standard swimming facility. This has not yet attained the status of a political promise.
So much for the love of sport and interest in the nation’s youths and opportunities for growth and development with and through sport.
There is the case of the sport of squash. The National Lotteries Authority (NLA) acquired the Cecil Cyrus Squash facility and made it their headquarters, leaving the sport with its two high-level courts and one of lesser quality. Despite the fact of inadequate attention to the sport’s facilities, athletes from our country have distinguished themselves at the Caribbean level. Today, young Jayden George has attained the highest global ranking of any Vincentian squash player in the sport’s history. But even then, there is no consideration to facilitating the expansion of the sport’s facilities beyond what has been existing.
The sports, Basketball, Netball, Volleyball, Table Tennis, Boxing and Gymnastics are all Indoor sports. Gymnastics has benefitted from a gift of the hangar belonging to Mustique Airways at the former ET Joshua Airport to the country’s lone gymnastics club. All of the other indoor sports have been requesting government support for a home that they can share, but to no avail. The health risks for continuing use of concrete or asphalt surfaces for the indoor sports are well known yet the requests of the respective national federations continue to be ignored.
The St Vincent and the Grenadines Netball Association (SVGNA) has recently won the bid to host the Qualifiers for the Americas for the next edition of the Netball World Cup (NWC) 2027. The local association will host the event the Qualifiers will be hosted here 13 – 23 October 2026. Up to 16 teams are eligible to participate in the Qualifiers. Americas Netball, in understanding the work that this country has been engaged in to sustain the development of the sport, supported the SVGNA’s bid, despite the absence of an Indoor facility. Had we been paying attention, the much-needed facility would have been constructed and used with remarkable frequency.
Cricket Legends or political pawns
Finally, the courting of electoral votes via the cricket legends of the West Indies must be seen as one of the most catastrophically embarrassing financial wastage in the history of Vincentian politics. Embarrassed by the political fortunes of Kishore Shallow, this country’s government wasted scarce financial resources on the cricket legends who may well have squandered themselves as political pawns. They were the recipients of due justice when Cricket West Indies (CWI) facilitated a grand ceremony in their honour in Barbados and could not have been so naïve as not to understand the political pantomime that the Vincentian government undertook by bringing them to the home base of the CWI president, to deliver what many must have considered a ‘political cricket pappy show’. The finances expended on the legends’ ‘show’ did nothing for sport or sport tourism in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Vincentians are left to judge for themselves the significantly large number of alternative projects that those finances could have better served. What the undertaking did show, is the extent to which the ruling regime does not really care about sport nor its historic athletes. It does appear that the latter are only as good and useful as their votes in this country’s general elections.
