By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(“Plain Talk” July 18, 2025)
‘The higher monkey climbs, the more he exposes his naked ass.’ — African proverb
Last Tuesday evening, Gonsalves and his clansmen launched their self-styled Emancipation Cricket Festival. The festival will run over four days. Gonsalves took exception to someone labelling his extravaganza a clown show. The description is apt. He might as well market his most recent high-wire event as “The Great Kishore Shallow High Fall”. It will fail. Citizens should ignore him so that the event flops.
The theme of Gonsalves’ festival, which comes at a significant expense to Vincentian taxpayers, is “Legacy, Unity and Excellence”. Gonsalves is not interested in the proclaimed theme. His primary concern is control and power. Karl Marx famously observed, “History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as a farce.” As to Gonsalves’s rise in Vincentian politics, a case of farce and tragedy fits the bill.
Gonsalves is a fraud. If he had the interest of Caribbean cricket at heart, his “festival” would not be organised in opposition to Cricket West Indies. If unity meant anything more than an empty word, the Vincentian national Dr. Kishore Shallow, president of Cricket West Indies, would be front and centre in organising the event in much the same way Gonsalves bearhugged him in the run-up to the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup last year. But no! This festival is an anti-Kishore show. Look at who Gonsalves praised for doing the heavy lifting for the event, Carlos James, his North Leeward constituency candidate, who Dr. Shallow is poised to trounce at the polls.
He does not want to celebrate our legends. He wants to use them as props. He does not believe in unity; he claims absolute loyalty. Gonsalves has no regard for excellence or independence. His sole desire is to continue his misrule over our land. We must not let him.
An enduring theme of PM Gonsalves is “Labour Love”. One does not have to look far to conclude that the phrase is devoid of real substance and is nothing more than an empty slogan. Truth be told, Gonsalves, more than any other political leader in our history, has repeatedly demonstrated that he cherishes obedient servants and harbours disdain rather than love for people.
Gonsalves’ relentless assault on Dr. Kishore Shallow following his decision to join the opposition New Democratic Party and becoming a candidate in the North Leeward constituency in the impending election is clear proof of his malafides.
Mind you, politics is not kids’ play. There is no easy road to power unless you are well-connected. If you offer yourself as a candidate for a major party, expect to be challenged, cursed and lampooned. With Gonsalves, you only matter to him if you abandon your critical faculties and offer yourself as a useful idiot. I will bet my left hand that Gonsalves does not claim as a friend a single person who does not toady up to him or opposes him politically.
In 1982, when he broke with the United People’s Movement (UPM), he argued that if those whom he abandoned had been thrown into the sea, no one would miss them. Today, most of those persons are jesters in Gonsalves’ court — anyone offering the slightest shade to anything he says or does can anticipate his small-minded, vindictive wrath. Expect to be called a “low-down down dutty dog” or worse.
In the extravagant bid to host games in the 2024 International T20 Cricket Tournament, Dr. Kishore Shallow was fit for purpose. Gonsalves described him as a brilliant young man who was a worthy son of our Vincentian civilisation. Dr. Shallow, we were told, was the right person for the job as president of Cricket West Indies and a man who made us proud.
All of the public praise for Dr. Shallow evaporated after he announced his political allegiance. Immediately, Gonsalves disclosed that he regretted supporting Dr. Shallow’s presidency of Cricket West Indies. He doubled down on the nonsense and argued that cricket administration and electoral politics cannot mix, and Dr. Shallow must choose between cricket and politics. He claimed that under Dr. Shallow’s leadership, West Indies Cricket has sunk to the worst level it has ever been. In light of the West Indies’ humiliating loss to Australia last week, he bellowed that everyone on the board, including Dr. Shallow, should resign.
Absent from the criticism about the decline of West Indies cricket, whose genesis can be traced back to the mid-1990s, is the fact that he, Gonsalves, was the Chair of CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee (PMSC) on Cricket from 2016 to 2023. If blame is to be cast, Dr. Shallow should be deemed less culpable.
Not in Gonsalves’ world! Dr. Shallow is chastised as aloof, detached and unaccountable. CWI is accused of missing essential dates on the West Indies cricket calendar –the anniversary of when the West Indies Cricket Team were unofficial champions of test cricket following their 2-1 Test defeat of Australia in 1965 and the region’s success in the World Cup cricket in 1975. Gonsalves’ proclamation was nonsensical because in March 2025, Cricket West Indies disclosed that it would bring together the legends of our 1975 triumph and fittingly honour them at a gala event in Barbados.
Puffed up with vain glory, Gonsalves refuses to admit he was wrong. The self-styled inaugural Emancipation Cricket Festival is his reinvigorated stunt to tame or outdo Dr. Shallow. He accused CWI of insulting our legends with the gift of US$10,000 and a plaque. Is he proposing to offer each legend who graces the Arnos Vale Ground a more fitting gift? At what cost to the national purse?!
News broke yesterday that another of Gonsalves’s devious attempts to outmatch Dr. Shallow had flamed out, as the Pete Russell, CPL’s chief executive officer, directed the government to engage Dr. Shallow and the CWIL if it expects their endorsement for the “festival”.
Rather than get in Dr. Shallow’s way, Gonsalves should let the young man soar like an eagle. It is time for Vincentians to bring down the curtains on Gonsalves’s horror show.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
The chickens have indeed come home to roost. The Emperor has beem stripped of his clothes and his nakedness exposed for all to seee.
A good piece from Jomo Thomas..
Beautiful article Jomo …. Finally someone who see things the way they truly are!
Jomo Sanga, you are right about everything you said about Raph Gonsalves. Guess what? You are the only person in public life, in this country, who knows how to handle Ralph Gonsalves in the correct manner. Jomo Sanga, I am not kidding you, I think, you are one of the best journalists or writer in SVG and the Caribbean. Sanga, I know you have written some very good articles in the past. But you know what? You have killed it, very well, in this article. To say the least, it is quite disgusting, the way, Ralph Gonsalves has been picking on this young man, Kishore Shallow. Sanga, if my memory serves me right, next month, August the 8th is Gonsalves 80th birthday and Gonsalves has not missed a beat of behaving like a clown. In my opinion, I think it is about time Gonsalves recognized that he is in the rare view mirror. What is in the past stays in the past. It is a good thing though, Gonsalves cannot make the past great again. Sanga, if Gonsalves was a product on a supermarket shelf, like a can of something, when you scan it at the counter, it would read expired. Gonsalves is a can of prime minister who will become expired in 2025. Sorry, ULP, I cannot buy an expired can of prime minister. He is a shameless man.
Jomo, as always, all of your articles are well written and enjoyed by me. There is hardly anything written that I would take serious exception to. The one that truly stands out to me, however, is the “Opposition Politics” published on April 11, 2025.
It not only contextualises the history of opposition politics initiated by local organisations and individual activists challenging the status quo, but at the same time, it seeks to challenge ALL OF US AS VINCENTIANS to look from within ourselves as to what each of us can and should do to assist in bringing about meaningful political changes in SVG.
Too often, many individuals are just too lazy to come out from their comfort zones when they simply point to the non-actions of the opposition NDP, ignoring the fact that all of us have a role to play and that role is not just to simply criticise the NDP and point fingers. I am not suggesting that there aren’t times when we do need to call them out on certain matters.
In that April piece you asked the question: “Did citizens’ efforts to improve their lives and the nation’s future abruptly stop on March 28 ,2001, when the Unity Labour Party came to power?”
In your words Jomo- “…….we cannot buy the thoughtless argument that there is no opposition. To embrace the no-opposition viewpoint is to make ourselves invisible and unworthy. We are the future we have been waiting for. Every serious Vincentian must understand that they are the opposition and commit to ending Gonsalves’ stranglehold on our country. Whenever they come before the next election, eat them out, drink them out, and vote them out.”
This is powerful stuff Jomo!!! Thank you!
Cricket and politics are indeed poor bedfellows, as any sensible person should know.
Alas, Jomo Thomas’ hatred of Dr. Gonsalves is so intense that it has robbed him of any sensitivity.
You’ve been promoted to head house slave, C Ben. You’re defending yourmaster, the biggest hater of them all. Don’t you think your master trying to destroy certain individuals in Vincy, is based on hatred of the black man who dares to challenge and oppose him? You’re the head coon ,C Ben. Way to go.
Alas, all ar yo hatred for Dr. Shallow and Jomo is so intense that it has robbed ar yo of any sensitivity. Hypocrites , Hypocrites. All bcau the young black man refused to align himself with accused rapisttttt
Ralph Gonsalves is in the same row as Yoweri Muselveni, Paul Biya, Brice Oligui Nguema, Faure Gnassingbé, Kagame and Alassane Ouattara. Them boys running things down there in Africa only difference he is white.