Lawyer Shackell Bobb to replace ‘Pitbull’ as senator

Rochard “Pitbull” Ballah will in August demit office as a government senator and parliamentary secretary and take up post as the government’s director of communications, which has been vacant for some time since Elson Crick retired.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said on Friday that when the arrangements are made in relation to Ballah, he would advise the governor general to appoint lawyer Shackell Bobb as a senator and parliamentary secretary.

Gonsalves said that Bobb – who has been an officer at the SVG Financial Services Authority for the last eight months – will have oversight of the Prime Ministerial Council on Youth, which the Cabinet has decided to establish.

He said that the council, which is to be chaired by 27-year-old budget analyst Anson Latchman, is the link between the Prime Minister’s Office and the youth.

He said that Bobb — a former Crown counsel at the National Prosecution Service —  will have other duties but this will be one of her central functions.

Bobb was called to the bar in November 2017, but before then had made national headlines as Miss P’Tani 2011 and a contestant in the Miss SVG 2014 pageant.

Gonsalves noted that Bobb is a 30-year-old lawyer and a mother.

He described her as “a young lady who has already distinguished herself in all her activities in which she is engaged and comes from the bowels of the working people in the Marriaqua valley, another child of the education revolution.

“And I repeat, I am very honoured and pleased and blessed to have been someone who has worked with the generation above me … worked with person of my generation, moulded the generation below me … and then going to the generation even below that one now.”

Gonsalves noted that by 2050, Bobb will be 47 years old.

“In other words, we are dealing with the leadership into the second half of the 21st century. What a fantastic blessing which the good lord has expressed through the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Not many persons have had that blessing and I thank almighty God and the people for that particular blessing.”

The minor cabinet reshuffle is the latest among changes to the government that Gonsalves said last month that the country would witness.

Earlier this month, Benarva Browne, 33, a town planner was appointed a senator and minister of urban development, energy, seaport development, seaport administration, Grenadine affairs and local government.

She replaced 71-year-old Julian Francis who had been a senator since the ULP came to office in March 2001, but was largely out of the public eye since July 2022, when he suffered a stroke.

Francis, who is also general secretary of the Unity Labour Party, has been appointed an advisor to the government. 

The changes to the government are similar to adjustments in the senatorial adjustments that Gonsalves has made midterm into each of his Unity Labour Party’s five consecutive five-year terms in office.

Meanwhile, Gonsalves pointed out that Latchman, who would head the advisory committee on youth, is a national scholar and cricketer and “a young man who has come from the bowels of the working people in the rural area of the country”.

He said the council will also include a core of other persons and separate chair persons for agriculture, culture, sports, education, health, information technology, tourism, fisheries, climate change, housing, Grenadines, creative industries, business and entrepreneurship, labour and the media.

The prime minister said that other sectors may be added.

“In other words, the advisory council consists of a core plus the chair of these bodies, so it will be over 20 persons,” he said, adding that in the governance arrangements there will be some alterations.