An opposition lawmaker is accusing the Unity Labour Party of having “dealings with the underworld” which is now “coming home to roost” in the form of crime and violence in the country.
Leacock, who is the opposition spokesperson on national security, said he was “almost getting scared to even talk about crime and violence in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“Actually, just now, at the rate we are going, nobody got left to kill, because all who you want kill done dead so you had to turn around kill yourself. That’s where we reach in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” he told the New Democratic Party’s village meeting in Block 2000 on Saturday.
Leacock was speaking one day after Jawansa Sanga Fraser was gunned down in Paul’s Avenue, Kingstown around 2 p.m., bringing the homicide count this year to 30.
“Every Monday morning, somebody dead and he’s saying it’s because they have woman to maintain,” Leacock said, referring to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.
Earlier this year, Gonsalves, who is also minister of national security, told a CARICOM symposium on crime, that some men kill to sustain pretty, high-maintenance women.
“Woman my eye,” Leacock said, adding that while in opposition, Gonsalves had blamed then Prime Minister St. James Mitchell and police chief Randolph Toussaint for the nation’s crime situation.
“You never heard in this country before that children from Grammar School, High school, Bishops, Timmy, this, that, the other spending so much of the time in [His] Majesty’s Prisons.
“… too many of our young people, who ain’t dead, dey in jail,” Leacock said.
He praised “the honesty” of acting Assistant Commissioner of Police with responsibility for crime-fighting, Trevor “Buju” Bailey, whom he did not identify by name, for saying publicly that gangs are operating in SVG.
“But he didn’t stay there. He said you would be surprised on evenings when you go to some of these hideouts or locations for these gangs, the number of our school children still in uniform who are in those places,” Leacock said.
“It means we are losing generations and generations of our people… And what does the minister of national security, say and or do? Nothing! Nothing!”
He noted that Antigua and Barbuda is passing laws because of a spike in crime in that Caribbean country.
“And the prime minister comes forward and speaks like a prime minister because he says that ain’t happening here in Antigua.
“Not in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And you know why that is so? For large measure, for large measure, many of them in government have dealings with the underworld. Many of them are coming home to roost.
“We in the New Democratic Party have a very serious challenge. That challenge is to draw that line and say, enough no more,” he said, adding that party leader Godwin Friday and the rest of the NDP team “are about doing exactly that.
“But we think through what we have to do. … we have a clear-as-crystal plan of how to go forward in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”