UWP LEADERSHIP ELECTIONS
By Lennox Linton
PRESS STATEMENT
Roseau, Dominica, Dec 4th, 2025- Recent comments by Dr. Thomson Fontaine describing constitutionally mandated annual leadership elections in the United Workers Party (UWP) as a “wash-your-foot-and-come” affair require clarification.
The National Executive Committee of the UWP has discussed the matter, and Dr Fontaine has agreed to the release of this statement because he wants us to “let the country decide”.
In our culture, the expression “wash your foot and come” used disparagingly, as it was in this instance, suggests that the process in question is casual, unserious, and open to any and everyone without standards or structure.
To apply such language to the Party’s leadership elections is therefore to imply that our Constitution creates an environment where leadership contests are:
– Unstructured and disorderly,
– Trivial and undignified, and
– Vulnerable to instability rather than rooted in democratic discipline.
That interpretation is not only inaccurate; it is unfair to our founders, the framers of our Constitution, and to the thousands of members who have upheld it faithfully over the years.
Annual elections are not a “wash-your-foot-and-come” affair.
They are a deliberate democratic safeguard, designed to ensure:
– Accountability of leaders to the membership,
– Regular renewal of mandate,
– Transparency in the exercise of authority, and
– The right of every member to participate meaningfully in the Party’s direction.
Far from weakening the Party, these provisions strengthen it by ensuring that leadership is earned, renewed, and reaffirmed — not assumed by entitlement or prolonged by inertia.
Our Constitution reflects the values upon which this great Party was built: openness, accountability, discipline, and democracy.
To dismiss its processes with casual, disrespectful language is to misunderstand their purpose and to diminish the hard work of those who have sustained this movement through many decades.
The Party remains confident that its leadership elections — held annually, properly conducted, and guided by clear rules — represent not a triviality, but a pillar of internal democracy intended to keep us united, focused, and responsive to the people we serve.