Camillo has failed and should not be re-elected 

Camillo Gonsalves is PM Ralph Gonsalves’ oldest son. His mother is Jamaican. His navel string was severed in Philadelphia in the United States, on June 12, 1972. 

He’s been the parliamentary representative for East St. George (ESG) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines since December 2015. Post-election, his initial job posting included being the minister of economic planning,0sustainable development, industry, trade, information and labour. It was Daddy’s present to him, 12 days before Christmas, 2015. Talk about being born with a gold spoon in your mouth. 

Unless he acquired the relevant qualifications and training on days not ending in Y, at Sunday school, or via osmosis, Camillo was as qualified for his assemblage of original portfolios as Jimmy Prince is qualified to be minister of health or Ces McKie was qualified to serve as minister of tourism. The ULP is infamous for attempting to insert square pegs into circular holes.

In November 2017, the Finance portfolio was offloaded onto him by his adoring pappy. This left many in the civil service and in Parliament absolutely aghast.

In November 2020, he was re-elected, by a very close margin of 196 votes, to serve the people of ESG for a second five-year term. Camillo’s ministerial portfolios since his re-election have been manipulated to include finance, economic planning, and information technology. 

According to his CV, Camillo’s tertiary level qualifications are in journalism, law, and global affairs. None are in economics, finance, or IT-related fields. On hearing such, any logically thinking Vincentian is likely to ask, why did his father appoint him to lead the charge in such critical, diverse, and pivotal governmental areas? 

The answer is: Ralph Gonsalves is ensuring that when he (Ralph) departs from the political stage and his successor has to be chosen, Camillo would be smelling like a rose, while the other contender, Sabato Caesar, would have been tremendously handicapped because the Maximum Ruler intentionally anchored Sabato to the Ministry of Agriculture for almost his entire tenure in cabinet. From time immemorial, the PM believed that Sabato never had the “pedigree” (quoting the PM) to lead SVG. 

While the upcoming fight as to who will succeed Ralph as party leader will be determined by Ralph Gonsalves, and not the ULP’S card-carrying members, however, who will represent ESG in the SVG Parliament after the next election will be determined by those registered voters in ESG who turn out to vote on election day, barring any shenanigans on the part of the ULP. 

Questions regarding Camillo’s representation of ESG constituents 

Before WASTING your vote for Camillo, there are certain questions that need to be honestly entertained. Some of these questions include:

Question #1. What is Camillo’s historical connection to ESG? Why was he handpicked by his father to represent us, the voters of ESG? 

Answer #1: CAMILLO HAS ABSOLUTELY NO HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO THE CONSTITUENCY OF ESG. EITHER DIRECTLY OR BY PROXY. The fact of the matter is, the voters of ESG are being used by Ralph and Camillo Gonsalves. Ralph Gonsalves gave his son Camillo, an undisputed foreigner, a helping hand into the SVG Parliament, with both of them ultimately hoping that being in Parliament will pave the way for Camillo to succeed his father as PM. 

Suggestion #1: If Camilo or an agent comes begging you for your vote, ask them if Camillo ever caught crayfish in the main river running through ESG. Ask him if, during his formative years, he ever had farine or bam-bam made by the Wilsons; pitched marbles with his contemporaries; stoned mangoes, or played cricket/football with the boys in ESG; or knew of Rita, Jacqueline, Miss Elma, the Byrons, Thomases, Whylies, Kenneth, McLeans, Laynes, Huggins, Jones, Williams, Andrews, or the Rosses. Ask him to name his three best friends from ESG during his growing-up years. He cannot name one.

You should point out to Camillo that he’s a FAKE and you have no intention of being used by him, his father, or the ULP to achieve their dirty deeds. 

Question # 2: Does Camilo care more about you, the voter or your vote?

Answers #2: Camillo absolutely neglects you for four and a half years of the five years after he’s elected to office and all of a sudden, in the last six months, he’s everywhere in the constituency professing his love for the people of ESG. Not true!!! Don’t be fooled. For the first four and a half years of his term, he blatantly ignores you. Examples include: you could never reach Camillo on the phone, even after leaving countless messages with his secretary. He is always speaking to someone on his cell phone when he’s in public and does not stop to talk to you when you try to get his attention. Whenever he’s passing through the constituency, he is in his heavily tinted vehicle with his windows rolled up. He ignores the poor conditions of the roads, schools, community centre, playing fields, etc, for four and a half years, and suddenly, on the eve of the election, he is interested in rectifying his years of neglect. He never attends the funerals of his constituents, except when the election is a few months away. What a fake!

Conclusion #2: You are being taken for being “stupiddy” and “dotish”, by yet another Gonsalves. If Camillo genuinely cared for the people of ESG, the level of attention he’s paying to you and the constituency now, HE WOULD HAVE SHOWN YOU FOR HIS ENTIRE TERM OF 5 YEARS, AND NOT ONLY IN THE LAST 6 MONTHS. 

Suggestion #2: Let Camillo go take a hike. Do not be fooled into thinking that he cares about you. He does not. CAMILLO ONLY CARES ABOUT YOUR VOTE AND BECOMING PRIME MINISTER BY CLIMBING ON YOUR SHOULDERS. HE DOES NOT GENUINELY CARE ABOUT YOU, THE VOTER IN ESG. To believe otherwise means that you are only fooling yourself. 

Another issue: 

Rainforest Seafoods is primarily a Jamaican-owned company that recently received planning permission to build a fish retailing depot on their compound in Calliaqua. As a senior member of the cabinet and as the representative for ESG, did Camillo consider the financial impact that this depot is likely to have on fisherfolk in ESG? 

Suggestions #3: Fisherfolk in ESG and throughout the length and breadth of SVG, tell Camillo Gonsalves to stop taking you for granted or for fools. For they have shown by what is transpiring that they are prepared to facilitate a predominantly foreign-owned company ahead of hardworking and traditional Vincentian fisherfolk. Camillo and friends could not care if our fisherfolk go out of business as a result of Rainforest’s fish depot. Sad, but the evidence shows that this is true.

Old Labour 

Robert Milton Cato was the founder of the St. Vincent Labour Party and its leader for many years. I knew Milton (and his wife Lucy) very well. The Catos must be tumbling in their respective graves knowing that the Gonsalves dynasty has hijacked and now has a vice-like grip on their Labour Party, including its symbol, the star, and the party’s colour, fire engine red, and many of their older supporters. The supporters have been fooled into believing that Ralph Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party is the same as Milton Cato’s St. Vincent Labour Party. Not so. They are miles apart.

Cato would have encouraged the “Old Labour“ voters to, at least, boycott this election, or even more likely, vote for the alternative to the ULP and the Gonsalves hegemony: the NDP. For he would have seen Ralph and Camillo for what they are and as falling far short of “Old Labour’s” values. 

Vincent Beache far too easily agreed to Ralph’s demands. On the other hand, if Hudson Tannis, Cato’s de jure deputy and his obvious successor, didn’t perish in that ill-fated plane crash in 1984, Ralph Gonsalves would never have risen to such lofty political heights. 

SVG would have been in a much better place on every level. Just imagine for a moment an SVG without RG or any of his family members in the political mix for the last 25 years. SVG would have had a more efficient government; our society would have been more equitable; there would have been little to no victimisation and much less corruption; we would have had better health care services; had less violent crime; we would not have had our first family involved in scandals in other Caribbean countries; we would have had better fiscal management of our economy; and best of all, we would not have been tethered to the self-serving and vindictive Gonsalves family. Oh what a beautiful SVG that would have been. 

Finally 

The best time to have started freeing ourselves from the Gonsalves politically would have been 25 years ago. The next best time is now. 

Let us make it happen by resoundingly voting them out of office on Nov. 27. Vote overwhelmingly for the NDP candidate in ESG, Mrs. Laverne Gibson-Velox, and all of the NDP candidates across our country.

Let’s free SVG from Ralph, Eloise, Camillo, and Storm Gonsalves and their sycophants. Time to send this self-serving and terrible gang packing on election day.

Old Labour, from ESG 

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