Opposition MP St. Clair Leacock says that Attorney General Grenville Williams cannot be a non-partisan public servant within Parliament and a politician outside.
Leacock noted that when Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves came to office in March 2001, “he took an extremely strong position that he would not have a political attorney general.
“That was his argument, and he went for others who are not in the public service,” Leacock said at a New Democratic Party campaign event in Campden Park.
“Fast forward to where we are now,” Leacock said, adding that he would not focus on the government’s position regarding Addison “Bash” Thomas, Kenroy John and the late Elvis Daniel.
In 2010, the three teachers were forced to resign their posts when they were denied election leave under an agreement that the government had signed with their trade union, allowing them election leave and re-appointment to their posts if they lost at the polls.
Leacock noted that the government had since changed the law to allow public servants to run for elections.
“But in the process of doing that, we have in the parliament a gentleman, and I will call him out by name: Grenville Williams.
“He is the attorney general. In that regard, his loyalty, his constitutional responsibility, is to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Leacock said.
“The attorney general has to see the law, interpret the law, and advise on the law in the best interest of every man, woman and child … who wants justice in St. Vincent,” said Leacock, who is into his third five-year term as MP for Central Kingstown.
“You cannot take sides when you’re an attorney general. If it is wrong, it is wrong; and if it is right, it is right.
“So you cannot sit in the Parliament and say that you can’t have questions put to you by the opposition because you are the attorney general. But as soon as the bell ring and Parliament over, you change your tune, you bathe your skin, and you’re in the constituency as politician. It can’t happen like that,” Leacock said.
The ruling Unity Labour Party has identified Williams as its candidate for South Leeward in the next general election, widely expected later this year.
Leacock said:
“You can’t be attorney general by day and politician by night. Choose one. And if you had the lowest modicum of decency, you would resign your position as attorney general and come forward to the people as a politician.”
Leacock said that Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and the other members of his government who accept the situation are all “guilty of bad political hygiene.
“But over and beyond that, it demonstrates that whether you’re poor or you’re low, even those who are supposedly high in office and education genuflect on the altar of Ralphism and political expediency and corrupt this country, and it stinks and stinks to high heavens,” Leacock said.
He said voters in South Leeward, therefore, “have a responsibility to end that.
“And when that choice comes before you, not only vote for Nigel Stephenson, you not only vote for the key, but you take your foot and you kick ignorance out of the window and say never, ever, not you. Not here in South Leeward, not here in St. Vincent. We may be poor, but we understand what is political decency.”
Williams, rejected by the ULP as a 2015 candidate in favour of Jomo Thomas, who has since broken ranks with the party, is expected to face off with the NDP’s Nigel Stephenson, who will be seeking a fourth consecutive five-year term in office.
Leacock invited residents of South Leeward to “stand with your man.
“Nature and Major go together, we are the vice presidents,” he said, referring to himself and Stephenson, who are NDP vice-presidents.
Leacock said he was not going to speak at that campaign event about deeper issues in the constituency, adding that the government had said that when the new port in Campden Park is completed, it would close the one that the NDP built in Campden Park.
“If the port brings economic income to South Leeward, it means that wittingly or unwittingly, they are planning your economic demise. Less mouths in South Leeward and in Cam’ Park will eat ah food by their action,” Leacock said, adding that that is a story for another time.
He said Stephenson is a representative who is constituency-focused.
“There isn’t a parliamentary session in which Nigel doesn’t call this road, that road, this river, that river, this experience, that experience in detail, for and on behalf of his people in South Leeward — damn good at it,” Leacock said.
“He’s an extremely good constituency representative, and so shall be because he got the baton from an equally good political representative in Jerry Scott, and he can do no less, because he comes in the tradition of the New Democratic Party, where representative politics comes first,” Leacock said.
“When you are elected as a representative, it’s not about you; it’s about the temporary privilege you have been given to serve the people who have put you into office.”
He said that NDP politicians are united on some “cardinal principles” that separate them from ULP politicians.
Leacock said that NDP politicians support the implementation of a constituency fund.
“What does that mean? If Nature comes here and makes promises to you, we have a responsibility to give him the means to fulfil those promises,” Leacock said, noting that the ULP is opposed to such a fund.
“I can’t understand, for the love of me, how educated people, so-called sensible people, sometimes called decent people, can take a dose of dumb, and if it was not a public meeting, I would say jackassism on the other side and sit down and watch a buffoon drive them to lose their decency and … say ‘Nah. Nah. Nah. Me nah wah no money fuh spend fuh meself.”