Superintendent Minister of the Methodist Church in Saint Lucia, Seth Ampadu, has urged Saint Lucians to forgive Public Service Minister, Doctor Ubaldus Raymond.
Raymond has been at the centre of a scandal involving leaked audio recordings of at times salacious conversations with a female.
The Minister has since proceeded on leave while an investigation has been launched into the matter, a recent government statement said.
Raymond appeared on national television last week and spoke publicly for the first time since the scandal broke.
Methodist Minister, Seth Ampadu, told reporters that the parts of the television appearance that he watched showed a man who was sorry for what he had done.
“I think as a nation we need to forgive him because we all make mistakes,” Ampadu said.
“Once he has been able to come out, it shows that he feels sorry for what he has done, so as a people we need to accept him and forgive him,” the Clergyman asserted.
But at the same time Ampadu declared that Raymond should try to draw boundaries around his life.
“If you are a leader you need always to be very careful, extra careful in order not to make way for people to tarnish your image,” Ampadu told reporters.
“I want to appeal to the entire nation to forgive him,” he said.
Ampadu expressed the view that if another similar situation confronts Raymond, he will ‘run away from it.’
It’s not the first time that Raymond has been linked to scandal.
In 2017 nude photos, purportedly of him, went viral on social media.
Raymond filed a complaint to the local police that he was the victim of attempted blackmail.
He later said that he had forgiven the two apologetic young women involved in the nude photo blackmail scandal and that the case against them had been resolved.
