The voice of a vice-president of the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) was used to introduce Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves at the ruling Unity Labour Party’s (ULP) convention in Campden Park on Sunday.
In preparing to call Gonsalves to the podium, ULP chairman Edwin Snagg said that he had mentioned that an endorsement had been given, but not by any of the ULP’s “mouthpieces” on radio.
Snagg, one of the hosts of the pro-ULP “Shake-Up” radio programme, said that no one has to tell him about Gonsalves.
“I know Ralph good. Julian know Ralph good,” he said, referring to the party’s general secretary, Minister of Works Senator Julian Francis.
“All of us who are associated with him, we know him well, we know his capacity, we know his brilliance and I does sometimes say that God does sometimes choose men for a particular time for a particular purpose and put them in a particular place to conduct his particular work and when he finish he go determine when they finish their exit,” Snagg said.
“But hear how Leacock put it,” he added as a recording of Leacock speaking on radio was played.
In the recording, from his weekly appearance on his New Democratic Party’s (NDP) daytime radio show, Leacock says:
“… don’t be naive, if the New Democratic Party does not pay attention to that which is successful in the way that Ralph manages, his assertiveness, his boldness, his risk-taking, his oratory, his presence, his social living and draw lessons from it and replicate that which is good about him, then we can also pay a price.”
The recording continued:
“So, to dismiss Ralph as maybe he ain’t bright, he ain’t intellect, he ain’t this he ain’t that, the other and figure you can push him aside and that we will live happily after, it ain’t going happen. Ralph is a very serious and formidable political figure. I believe right now in Caribbean politics he doesn’t have an equal in the Caribbean and we must take him extremely seriously and determine how we can compete for that space. And he had the ear of a significant amount of our young people, he has regional respect, whether we want to say it or not, he has contacts and he has access to resources. That mean we in the New Democratic Party have to work even harder to get that which we deserve.”
There was not much reaction from convention attendees to the clip, and Snagg said:
“Alright, they have to work real hard. Really hard because we winning again, we winning again.”
He added:
“And I say, I couldn’t do it better. I don’t think nobody up here cudda do it better. Thank yo’ Leacock for informing your party, ULP and the country as a whole as to who Ralph is and what Ralph is. Comrades, alyo stand up and leh we welcome the political leader of the ULP and prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”
The convention was the final one for the ULP ahead of general elections, which Gonsalves said would be held by year-end, ahead of the March 2021 constitutional deadline.
Mr. Leacock looks in the above picture like he doesn’t have a clue. That is the man who would be our next minister of whatever. Leacock, you might make a better local preacher that politician.
When a people like us in SVG allow for a political family to dominate their politics for far too long, this is for sure, the type of excess they end up with, while the bulk of its population continue to go without.
The bulk of the population thus suffer deprivation and poverty while the elite stack up on the spoils. But is it surprising! We saw the same in India and elsewhere over the past few years as neo-colonialism takes hold as elite shouting socialism enrich themselves at the cost of the poor through cronyism, nepotism and corruption.
Africa’s richest woman is not who one wold expect her to be but she is truly rather surprising considering the makeup of the whole population of Africa. But does not the same goes for SVG?
“Africa’s richest woman and British-educated daughter of Angola’s former leader has part of her £1.7billion ($6.001 billion XCD) fortune frozen and claims her family is being ‘victimised’ by the country’s new president in corruption crackdown. Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s 38 years in power were synonymous with corruption, nepotism and authoritarianism”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850355/Africas-richest-woman-1-7billion-fortune-frozen-corruption-crackdown.html
Look around SVG and the outcome is likely to be much the same. A non-representative elite making the most out of unseen activities.
Do we have an efficient Tax system? Do our ruling elite allow for a well trained workforce? Just look at our skills gap compared to others? Do we have modern infrastructure? And what of the political leadership here? Is it not in the form of an entrenched extended political family?
Who therefore are the winners and losers in SVG?
“Applied Marxism always brings impoverishment and the destruction of human freedom” as is now seen in today’s Cuba, Venezuela and the China of the past before Deng Xiaoping’s reform of China.
Deng Xiaoping had embraced Marxism while working in France but was always a pragmatist, and later helping to undo some of the disastrous reforms of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward”. It prompted perhaps his most famous remark as he embarked on abandoning Marxism: “I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”
China today sadly however, have not abandoned all of its communist past, demonstrating how hard it is for totalitarians to abandon their usurpation of democratic values. For China today is but a totalitarian Capitalist economy, with all of the loss of freedoms of a totalitarian Marxist State.
We hear weasel words from JOMO and other Labour supporters here in SVG of the wonders of the Cuba’s and the Venezuela’s of this world, as they seek to champions them, and would have us believe that the Venezuelans and Cubans disasters are all the fault of the US but has Karl Marxian Socialism ever worked anywhere on this planet of ours?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=socialism+venezuela+prageru+
The Gonsalves family regime, imitators here in SVG of the Venezuelan and Cuban economic model, has to date brought us what Socialism will always bring its adherents, gross impoverishment and want, causing our nation to go begging, to be nothing but parasites on the rest of the world with our constant international begging.
“Real Socialism” Has Indeed Been Tried — And It’s Been a Disaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOSsBmwUfG0
The Venezuelan example where over five million people have fled the country and inflation rate there has increased to 53,798,500%.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=socialism+venezuela+prageru+
Leacock should sue big belly Gonsalves for reparations for misuse of intellectual property and plagiarism.
Ulp already lost ..just and this poverty fkery of a government most high
I might be ignorant or naive to say that I don’t care who win or loose Elections in SVG. I’m in my mid forties therefore I’ve lived under Cato, Mitchell, briefly Eustace and now Ralph. I’ve never voted because I just don’t care who win or loose. I can see some differences but I don’t feel any different. I grew up very poor and bent my mind very early to work hard to take my family out of that situation. Without any help or hand outs from any politicians, I grew up to be a man with enough to take care of my family; eat, roof, bills, education and a vehicle to drive about. Thank God. I do not have an ounce of energy to burn on Politicians, politics, candidates, representative etc. I’m too blessed to stress.
Yes writer, you are both ignorant and naive to say that you don’t care who win or lose an Elections in SVG. Just imagine for one moment if all individuals here, past and present-day, were to take the said same irresponsible attitude as you are now taking!
I dear say writer, Vincentians perhaps, may well now be speaking German, that is, if their continued existence were to be even permitted at all under the Third Reich! (January 1933 to May 1945)
Therefore be warned writer! Bad men often rule and have their way, because good men often do nothing! Further, may I say, our existing sorry plight is no doubt because there is so much ignorance in the nation, hence, the long arm of slavery continues to rule over us because so many here do nothing or if they do, they do they do it in ignorance of facts..