From Jolly Green

What
is wrong with Saint Vincent's PM Ralph E Gonsalves. Some will say he
has always been an obnoxious big-headed man with a devotion to
left-wing politics and Cuban communism in particular. Some will say
they love him and his ability to speak at the rostrum like no other.
Some even find his charismatic charm enchanting and magnetic.

Most
of our grandparents hated him; some even feared him and his
communist-style politics. They would never have elected him in a
million years; local Vincentian newspaper columns were always full of
comments by those folk condemning and calling him nasty names. They
saw a threat in him being head of government, leading the government,
even being an MP as a definite no! No!

I
suppose on the surface, all that sounds a little difficult to
understand, so I will try and explain.

So
how did Ralph Gonsalves become the leader of the ULP? How did he and
the ULP get elected? If he was disliked and distrusted, how on earth
did he become the ruler of SVG? How was he ever put in the position
to be able to start to build a family dynasty?

I
suppose the answer is not as difficult as one may think. Sleight of
hand, smoke-and-mirrors, devious politics, buying power, and once
obtained by paying proper stipends to those that helped him with his
mastery of it all. So the answer is a mixture of all those things.
But they are mixed with the Leninist ability to instil fear when all
else fails. Our grandparents hated him; some even feared him and his
communist-style politics.

So
let's get the most obvious out of the way first. "Fraud at the
Election." Someone or some group has manipulated the poles from
day one of the elections to government of the Unity Labour Party. Was
that done directly on the instructions of Ralph Gonsalves? That I
honestly do not know and have absolutely no evidence about that at
all. We do know that buying votes by bribing the electorate with
building materials, according to recorded comments, he does know
about that, and I believe he is the orchestra conductor on that
front. As for rigging the boxes and the voting lists and polling
forms, I do not know who organized that, I have heard opinions
putting dynasty member his cousin Julian Francis in the frame for
that. I slapped those people down for saying that, because they do
not have, and I have absolutely no evidence one way or the other as
far as that is concerned. So to say that is unfair if unfair or
fairness means one iota to them.

I
am going way further back to the Road Block Revolution when teachers
and other government workers blocked roads. They were all promised if
Ralph Gonsalves and the ULP were elected, they would all get a thirty
percent pay-raise. The Union leaders being like-minded Socialists to
Gonsalves urged their members to man the roadblocks. People were
greedy to the point of being evil, so the 30% pay-raise brought out
just about every man and woman who thought they would benefit from
that. As a by-the-way, after Gonsalves was elected, not one person in
the country got a 30% pay raise, except of course Mr. Vincent Beache,
who won what was equivalent to the US lottery.

So
the roads into Kingstown were blocked, busses and other transport,
private cars and trucks, and most importantly ambulances with the
very sick and dying were held up. The police stood by and abandoned
their duty. Some say they even cheered on the actions of the
criminals that handled those roadblocks.

That
action caused fright among the general population. The
Marxist-Leninist movement frightened some citizens shitless.
Vincentians are generally peaceful people, and sooner than have
another such instance or something even worse, they decided to vote
ULP. But that action has had adverse effects on the country from the
day it happened until today. Investors, Industrialist's, service
companies, all have stayed out of Vincentian business. None want to
put their capital at risk in a Marxist-Leninist style governed
country. That very action has set SVG workers in the wilderness of
unemployment for almost 20 years. Those that organized and those that
took part in the Road Block Revolution are responsible for destroying
the very fabric of employment for the Vincentian work-force. They are
responsible for people going hungry, living on the streets, children
going to school hungry, even the abuse of those children.

This
action of blocking the roads with barriers was not a demonstration;
this, in their own words, was a revolution, a revolt to overthrow a
legally elected government.

But
how did the Unity Labour Party get going and how was Gonsalves chosen
to lead it? Ralph Gonsalves was one of the leaders of the MNU, a
communist based Vincentian political party. Try as they did, the
leadership could not get the party into power even though Gonsalves
somehow got elected as an MNU member of parliament.

Between
March 1978 and April 1984, Mr. Vincent Beache served as the Saint
Vincent Labour Party [SVLP] [the real Labour Party] Member of
Parliament for North Central Windward and government Minister of
Trade and Agriculture.

Beache
retained his seat as Member of Parliament for North Central Windward
in 1984 when Sir James Mitchell's New Democratic Party (NDP) was
voted into office. However, Hudson Tannis, who had lost West
Kingstown to John Horne, was elected Leader of the Labour Party to
replace the retired Cato in 1985. Beache became Leader after Tannis'
died in a plane crash during August of 1986.

Beache
served as the SVLP Opposition Leader between July 1985 and March
1989, then the NDP made a clean sweep of the polls, and Beache was
swept away as well. He became the scapegoat for Labour's total
defeat. By 1992, Stalky John moved him out of the party top spot.
Beache, however, as a spite to Labour SVLP, returned as a turncoat to
lead the Movement for National Unity (MNU) in the 1994 election.

Mr.
Vincent Beache won the South Windward seat in 1994 and served as
Leader of the MNU Opposition. The Unity Labour Party (ULP) was
founded in 1994 by a merger of the Movement for National Unity (MNU)
and the Saint Vincent Labour Party (SVLP) with Beache as its leader.

1998:
At the end of the contentious 1998 general election, when polling
results giving the New Democratic Party (NDP) eight seats and the
ULP, seven seats were announced. Beache declared that he could not
accept the outcome and called for fresh elections, alleging voter
intimidation, fraud, and bribery. The NDP promptly refuted this. In
December 1998, in the first transfer of power, Beache resigned as
leader of the ULP. Dr. Ralph Gonsalves was later elected in his
place. Beache, however, remained as leader of the ULP opposition in
the House of Assembly through a secret deal between Beache and
Gonsalves in 1999.

1999:
Beache was eventually replaced as Opposition Leader by Ralph
Gonsalves.

Of
course, what had happened was that the Labour Party ceased to exist
and the Communist Party of SVG (MNU) had been re-cloaked to reappear
as a renamed Labour Party, the Unity Labour Party was under the same
control as the old MNU. The people of Saint Vincent, the traditional
Labour voters, had been fooled and tricked. Even to this day, they
think that the ULP is the original Labour Party when it most
certainly is not. It is the renamed communist MNU, now called the
Unity Labour Party [ULP]. Thousands of Vincentians are now communists
and don't even know it.

In
the 1998 polls, the ULP won the popular vote but remained in
opposition under the nation's first-past-the-post electoral system.

2000:
This was the juncture when the Road Block Revolution took place in
2000, and the NDP was told that SVG would be made ungovernable. The
unrest, which saw the roads to capital city Kingstown blocked,
grinding the economy to a halt, forced the NDP government to hold
talks in Grenada, with the ensuing agreement popularly terms the
"Grand Beache Accord."

Not
much is known of what Sir James, now retired, and then opposition
leader, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, discussed while walking
along Grand Beach when they reached a deal.

Under
this threat, which may be viewed by some as a form of blackmail,
which resulted in capitulation by Sir James Mitchell when he also did
some unknown deal with Ralph Gonsalves and called an early election
to take place in 2001.

On
27 October 2000, Mitchell resigned as Prime Minister, under the terms
of an agreement with the opposition designed to end the
anti-government protests that had affected the islands since May.
Arnhim Eustace became the third Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the
Grenadines.

2001:
When the ULP was elected to office in March 2001, Beache was returned
as Member of Parliament for South Windward; he resigned before the
2005 elections. In doing so, he stepped aside to allow Ralph
Gonsalves to become the owner of the whole cartload.

2002:
Beache had made the MNU the New Unity Labour Party [ULP]. Of course,
you can call a dog by the name pussy, but the dog is still a dog just
as the ULP was still a Marxist controlled communist party.

As
Beache's initial reward for passing government to Gonsalves, a part
reward for services to the Gonsalves/Frances proposed family dynasty,
Mr. Vincent Beache was knighted by the Queen. Mr. Vincent Beach, at
the recommendation and behest of Prime Minister Gonsalves to the
Governor-General, was bestowed a knighthood when he was awarded the
Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in
the Queen's Birthday Honours for distinguished public service. But
the real function was not quite so open; the service was to the
Gonsalves/Francis family/dynasty. Beache had done nothing for the
people of SVG that deserved a knighthood. Did he earn or deserve such
an honor, surely not, he sold out and was now a Gonsalves owned
collaborator.

But
this was only the beginning of his rewards; it went on for years,
right up to the time of his death, and even beyond

However,
he only served one term in office under the ULP administration, and
under the Gonsalves/Beache deal, he bowed out of electoral politics
in 2005. Beache was almost instantly appointed Minister of National
Security, and head of the Public Service and Airport Development.

The
Beach/Gonsalves accord was a successful transaction for both Beache
and Gonsalves. Resulting in bringing a bunch of communists to power
in SVG who previously had been unelectable to run the government and
the people did not know the difference. Even today, they do not see
the difference; Gonsalves specializes in attracting the most ignorant
among us.

Gonsalves
well-rewarded Beache for his transfer of personal power to him.

Over
the next decade, however, Sir Vincent Beache continued to wield
political influence, well rewarded for that, of course. Which
included being a government-paid employed consultant and advisor to
the Minister of National Security (Dr. Ralph E Gonsalves), something
that Beache was almost incapable of doing.

In
that post, he, along with the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of
National Security, supposedly had primary oversight of the day-to-day
operations of the ministry.

But
even after leaving the post of prime minister's adviser to National
Security in December 2015, Sir Vincent continued to serve on various
government boards, including as chairman of the Board of the
State-owned Housing and Land Development Corporation, and as a member
of the Firearms Board. He appointed as Chairman of PetroCaribe (SVG)
Limited, another highly paid position. Directorships of the East
Caribbean Group, VINLEC, Cadet Force.

He
remained a well and massively paid personal advisor to Gonsalves to
the end of his life. The rewards were terrific, but so was the gift
of leadership that he granted Gonsalves, which Gonsalves was
incapable of winning or earning by himself. Without Beache, Gonsalves
would have remained in the political wilderness forever. The old
people would have seen to that.

There
were constant public rumblings about all the paid positions that
Beache held, none of which he would or could have held without
Gonsalves putting him there.

Beache
was an ancient man and was most certainly not capable of proficiency
in any of those overpaid capacities. Commanding eight boards of
directors at the age of 86 years. Well, not commanding perhaps, but
the boardrooms being boring were at least somewhere to take a nap.

The
only person to call a spade a spade was NDP hero MP for Central
Kingstown, St. Clair Leacock. "It is corruption of the highest
order, and I do not care, I will stand the onslaught of any and every
member of the ULP because we must rid ourselves from that type of
devious practice where we are overfulling (sic) the belly of one
house,"

https://www.iwnsvg.com/2015/09/09/placing-sir-vincent-on-multiple-boards-is-corruption-mp/

Even
in death, Beache was rewarded by Gonsalves, when a State funeral was
arranged for the ending of a perfect partnership, for services
rendered to the Gonsalves/Frances family Dynasty. Why on earth did he
deserve a state funeral, his family are now so rich money is spilling
from everywhere? Why should Vincentians pay for a benefit that Ralph
Gonsalves personally claimed many times over?

Perhaps
Beache should have been renamed Bleach because he bleached the
country clean of many millions of dollars, millions upon millions.
But just why was Gonsalves so over-generous to him? Did it go beyond
what we thought we knew?

As
they say, never speak ill of the dead, which I generally observe,
unless, of course, they have seriously pissed me off.

Others
received rewards such as this, the knighthood of Sir Louis Straker.

In
1994, Straker contested the General Elections on a Unity Labour Party
(ULP) ticket and became the Member of Parliament for the Central
Leeward Constituency. He was re-elected in the 1998 general
elections, and again on 28 March 2001. On 1 April 2001, Straker was
sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Commerce, and Trade. In May 2005, he was appointed Minister of
Transport, Works, and Housing. He was returned as Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Commerce, and Trade after successfully contesting the
December 2005 General Elections.

In
2010, Sir Louis bowed out of politics. However, in 2015, he was
selected to represent the Unity Labour Party (ULP) in the Central
Leeward constituency, which has been subject to dispute. He won his
old seat and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of
Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration in the fourth Ralph
Gonsalves Administration. There is absolutely nothing there that
deserves a knighthood on behalf of the people. The Gonsalves/Francis
Dynasty has derived the real benefit. Because when you analyze what
he did, he got Camillo Gonsalves on the first and following rungs of
the ladder to a set of high government positions, culminating with
the second most crucial government ministry, as Minister of Finance.

The
award of the Kingstown central car park to a group of past MNU
members, who formed a corporation called Solidarity Inc to run the
car park, can you believe the audacity of using that communist
related name? They were given the car park; forget about a Tenders
Board, they didn't feature at all. What a slap in the face that is
for decency.

All
rewarded really for service to Ralph E Gonsalves, and what has now
developed into the Gonsalves/Francis Dynasty.

Jolly Green, often heard never seen, but squeaky clean.

END

DISCLAMER: The opinion, belief and viewpoint expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinion, belief and viewpoint of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com or official policies of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com