VANTERPOOL REJECTS ANCESTRY TEST FOR PREMIERSHIP

People's Leadership Movement leader Mark Vanterpool rejected the notion that the premiership should be limited by birthright, telling supporters on Saturday that the Virgin Islands belongs to everyone who has chosen to live there.

At a PLM gathering in Sea Cows Bay on October 17, Vanterpool condemned what he saw as divisive rhetoric without naming its source. "There are those who are out there trying hard to divide us, trying to make us different people in their minds," he said.

The comments responded to political commentator Claude Skelton Cline, who had recently argued that only someone with ancestral ties through at least one parent should hold the premiership. Skelton Cline said he had communicated this view to Vanterpool before the National Democratic Party's internal elections in April, framing it as a matter of principle rather than capability and noting that Vanterpool did not meet that standard.

Rather than engage directly with the ancestry question, Vanterpool pointed to the composition of the electorate itself. The voters list, he noted, draws from across the BVI and nearly every Caribbean island, encompassing both people with deep roots in the Territory and those who arrived more recently.

"On the voters list are people who come from everywhere that have come to make these islands our home," Vanterpool stated. He closed by invoking the PLM's slogan: "One people, with one purpose, with one future."