THE PLOT TO RUIN RALPH GONSALVES

EUSTACE & CO. KEEPING GONZALVES IN POWER
(or How SVG Ruined Ralph)

by LOUSHI STE LUCY

Garcon Vinci,

Isn't  amazing how unassailable Ralph Gonsalves has become in spite of everything he does to ensure that the opposition can destroy him?

Oh, Great Pharoah....

The  multi-million dollar abandoned cross-country road, the  whole nasty business with the female cop and the Canadian lawyer, the unbridled ego, the thin-skinned-ness that causes him to mistake criticism for attack, the timely and imprudent withdrawal of one million dollars from the Building and Loans Association, the selling of holy land to finance his greatest monument to himself, the Argyle airpor, the middle finger, the profanity, the absurdity of a once tirelessly reasonable man...

The man is a phenomenon. He should have outlived his usefulness in his own party five to seven years ago. By now, he should be a troublesome elder statesman who  has to be given foreign asssignments just to keep him out of domestic trouble. But for some reason,  he has been promoted from Prime Minister to King and now stands on the verge of self-declared deification.

Sir J: Prince of the passsive pot propagation policy

The man is almost a god. The FLOGG  has searched Vincentian history and law and found that this  is not entirely his fault. St Vincent has a long history of making its leaders Pharoahs. And everyone knows that Pharoahs inevitably declare themselves gods. Do we really need to name names here? Can we do let the dead sleep and The Sleeping Dog lie? (More deference going to The Sleeping Dog than the dead, if you know what I  mean. Mitchell's marijuana passive and prudent policies on marijuana gave the Windward Islands very frequent and needed blood transfusion. Believe, St Lucian middle men, fishermen and young male retailers would have been dead without it. Not that there's much else to admire...)

Y’all ever hear the one about doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result?

So why is it that Arnhim Eustace continues to be your political leader of the opposition?

Y’all are just having a moment of crazy? Want stew in it for a little while longer?  Or maybe, just maybe, it's a plot to ruin Ralph Gonsalves for history and posterity.

Make no mistake, Ralph is a great Caribbean citizen. In spite of all his foolishness and arrogance, history will try to remember him kindly. Especially if that history is  written by non-Vincentians.

I, myself, am no great enemy of Dr Ralph Gonsalves. If not for his  frequent and regular bouts of being an A-hole,  he would stilll be an unequivocal Caribbean hero to me. I once heard him talk about the new, post-Communist social democracies of the Caribbean and it changed my thinking. I liked George Odlum and Tim Hector, Errol Barrow and Rosie Douglas. I’m one step from worshipping Maurice Bishop as the closest thing to a crucified Christ the Caribbean ever had. All the other brothers of the revolution are dead. I would have been a communist,  except I was born too late. I want to like this guy. I want Ralphie to have a legacy.
But when you give him this weak-assed, predictable opposition, you ruin him. You never get the best out of  him. You allow the power to give him a God-complex. He forgets that he is just an ordinary man of the dirt and starts thinking he’s John Compton or Eric Williams or something.

Ralph Gonsalves needs a kick in the ass.

The Allegorical state of SVG (and the entire EC)

But in order to properly execute and deliver that kick, the opposition first needs some slaps in the face. They need to face up to what the Great Social Democrat has never dealt with – the death of agriculture, the economic unsustainability of the Caribbean states as they exist today, the lack of a mid-to-long term national vision plan.

Stop dogging Ralphie and letting him set the agenda.

Attack his weakness – which is that, as the Last Great Social Democrat, he has been a magnificent failure at delivering any part of utopic Caribbean dream country that he once embodied.

Hopefully, this will achieve two things. It will uplift the political debate in SVG from the gutter – which is not so bad, because your country is relatively clean. And second, it will make both the opposition and the Gonsalves government better. The main reason that Ralphie has become such a shit is because your opposition has remained such a toilet.

George, Tim, Rosie, Maurice are dead. Even Hugo is dead. And Castro...let's be honest, that's a different category of thing....fine. The point is that Ralphie is the last living Good Old Communist. After him, there are two generations of Caribbean leaders who don't know the difference between their asses and the heart of the Caribbean people. Ralphie cannot be allowed to simply go the way of the greats before him - i.e. become an egotistical old ass who needs to be put out to pasture before he hurts  himself. As a Vincentian, nay, a Caribbean national treasure, he must be saved from himself.

Unfortunately,  his  own party cannot be relied on to do what it right, because they stand the most to lose from it. Most tragically, it falls  to Arnhim Eustace's opposition to rescue Ralph from the plot to ruin his eternal legacy.

There is no  doubting that Ralphie can do better than he’s doing now. But there is also no doubt that he doesn’t need to. Politics is the art of the possible. If the opposition makes it possible for Gonsalves to screw up and survive, then he doesn’t need to fret about doing things right.




It’s not his fault the opposition sucks.

Walks like a duck,  talks like a duck, loses elections like a duck. Must be a duck.