Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves is “tired” and “out of touch”, says Opposition Leader Godwin Friday, adding that it is time for new leadership in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“Ralph Gonsalves is tired. He’s out of touch. He doesn’t relate to the people — certainly not in the way he did years and years ago and when people felt that they could give him their trust now,” the opposition leader said on NICE radio on Monday.
Friday said people are now asking why Gonsalves is continuing “because he just seems so completely out of touch with what’s happening on the ground”.
The opposition leader said people are questioning the “whole saga with Vybz Kartel and all that”, asking “‘What you putting St. Vincent name in them kind of thing for’?
“You’re making people all over the Caribbean laugh at us,” Friday said.
He was referring to the visit to St. Vincent in August by the Jamaican dance hall artiste who was freed of a murder charge in July, after 13 years in prison.
During his visit to St. Vincent, reportedly for medical reasons, Kartel had a meal with Gonsalves at the Official Residence of the Prime Minister in Old Montrose.
“And then you have now this thing with the plane in Venezuela, the plane that Madura bought and came through St. Vincent,” Friday said.
Last week, US authorities announced that they had seized in the Dominican Republic and flown to Florida a plane reportedly belonging to Maduro.
The authorities said that the plane had been sold to Maduro in contravention of US sanctions and had stopped in St. Vincent on its way to Venezuela.
Friday noted that Gonsalves had said that he did not know the plane had flown to St. Vincent and that he was going to find out exactly what happened.
“I mean, that takes begs credulity, but that’s his explanation,” the opposition leader said.
“The point of the matter is, in that situation, the evidence, or the information that we have, the reports that we hear, that the plane came to St Vincent not once, was probably more than once, and that it was used in the exchange they had down in Canouan,” Friday said.
Reports are that the plane was used during an exchange of prisoners in Canouan between the United States and Venezuela.
Gonsalves said on WE FM, on Sunday, that the US sanctions were unilateral and Washington had not sought his government’s cooperation in enforcing them.
Friday commented:
“And you could choose to say, ‘Well, listen. That’s a unilateral sanction, as not a UN sanction. We ignore it.’
“But you ignore it at your own peril because there are consequences. Yes, you’re making your own political decisions, your own choices as to who your friends are and what you want to do to support them and so forth. But there are consequences. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
Friday said political leaders in SVG must always act in the best interest of the country.
“And that is what I am intending to do, and that’s what our team will do, and that is what the present government absolutely is not doing,” the opposition leader said.
“They’re just being driven by their own self-interest, their own whims and fancies, and just bringing St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ name, putting, as they say, our name in people mouths for all kinds of things that we would rather not be associated with; we should not be associated with.”
The opposition leader said this is why change is needed.
“That is why we need to bring a change in this country to have people who are focusing, laser focusing, on the needs of the people.”
He said people’s main concern is that they are “catching hell”, adding that grocery prices change weekly.
“… it seems like every day the price is going up, especially now — fruits and vegetables are outrageously expensive in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Grocery stores, people are going there and they trembling because they don’t know whether they are going to be able to afford to buy their regular groceries because everything the price going up.”
Friday said the government has made the situation worse “because they increased taxes last year in the budget.
“All them taxes associated with vehicle registration and inspection and all them kind of stuff and so forth increase government revenue.”
The opposition leader said that because of these tax increases, the Minister of Finance can brag that compared to 2023, the government collected $10 million more up to July this year.
“Where you think that money coming from? It is taxes that they’re putting on people, it’s squeezing people. So, government revenue, they’re improving, but the ordinary person, they have less in their pocket.
“They’re meeting it harder when they go to prepare their children to go to school, as I am seeing now, by all the people come to me to ask for assistance as they go to the groceries, and they’re confronted weekly with their grocery bill. They are feeling it hard,” Friday said.
That was a slam dunk. It should wake up people to the real situation SVG is living in. Ralph Gonsalves is choosing his friends, who are dictators and going about it as though that is what the Vincentian people want. Time enough for people to wake up and start looking at these things when they go into the voting booth.
An old angry man worn out incoherent and boring? in my opinion just a disgusting horrible human being.