The music plays triumphant. Drifting notes quiver.
‘So praise the wise, the brave and strong who built fair isles of beauty
And rich in art made richer still
The brotherhood of duty.’
Light beams from blatant eyes. Beauty is bewitched with feelings. There is infinite contentment.
And ‘The Comrade,’ Dr The Right Honorable Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Everard Gonsalves joins the rank of noble men. Under heavy smog, I cast an ear to the distant chorus while ‘The Comrade’ opens the vista to the people of St Vincent and the Grenadines and to the world. There is meaning to life as he establishes a vertically-oriented style of government so ideologue that even critics stop to think.
Wiretap transcripts bears incongruous tales of an autocratic style leadership and a centralized political system exercising near-dictatorial control, but his constitutional reform efforts for the people of St Vincent and the Grenadines cannot go by unnoticed.
In standing up to a woeful and lost NDP defunct form of leadership, Dr Gonsalves shows that he is not a puppet of either the US, Venezuela, Iran or anyone, but a man of sound moral principles and he leads his country accordingly, for ‘The Comrade’ dances to the music and not the instrument.
Then the chord of victory strikes. In joining the company of noted Caribbean leaders as Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Norman Manley of Jamaica and Errol Barrow of Barbados, it is needed in the rhyme of reason.
There is a fine refrain as ‘The Comrade’ bolsters himself locally while maintaining good relations with the US on security and law enforcement issues. He beckons to other Caribbean islands to follow, for he knows the names of reliable strategic partners and important sources of investment, tourists and trade. He does nothing to damage that relationship.
There is no fire fuelling in his back yard for he is the new architect of fundamental political change in the region. His personal political leanings have nothing to do with his leadership style. His country needs money and the ULP needs money to support the public infrastructure programs that bring jobs, and so atop a vibrant bass he reaches out to non-traditional sources of funding and ignores the overblown frustrated rhetoric of NDP critics.
Then there are pauses between the notes but this is where the art resides.
Intelligence is at its peak in St Vincent and the Grenadines. ‘The Comrade’ is not a Chavista neither an Iran satellite and will not become one. In all honorable conduct, he secures handouts from whoever will provide them, yet his freedom of action is at a top maintenance. In keeping with this pragmatic approach to foreign relations, ‘The Comrade’ performs the ‘foil play’ with the US and other colonial powers, for he knows the art of handling the notes better than the other dancers.
Honed in stereophony, I hear the last movement of Beethoven's seventh for they are fading slowly. Why waste time on NDP illusions when you can listen to the B minor mass?
October 25, 2011
caribbeannewsnow
