Although he described himself as once a rebel and still a rebel on Sunday, the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and Grenadines, came off sounding sometimes more like a pastor during his presentation.
The event was the Saint Lucia Labour Party’s (SLP) 74th annual conference of delegates where Dr. Ralph Gonsalves was the featured guest speaker.
According to Gonsalves; “the Labour family” believes and every day we reaffirm our belief in the supremacy of God and the freedom and dignity of man and woman”.
“The programme of a Labour family, the philosophy of the Labour family, the policies of a Labour family, if you read the three parables in the book of Matthew, Chapter 25 you find them,” he added.
Gonsalves went on to say that the first parable about the six foolish virgins and the six wise virgins saw the wise ones being prepared as they had; “put a little oil in their lamp.”
“You have to plan, that is the first thing,” he said.
He then referenced the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, where three men were given one, five and ten talents respectively.
“Those who had more talents, they multiplied the talents put those talents to good use. The one who had the one talent, he bury it and when the master came …he said proudly I have it here, I’m gonna dig it up for you…but he was rebuked,” Gonsalves said.
“Government can’t walk on water, you can’t build houses with talk, you have to build houses with hands and with talents and with resources and in a Labour family we do not eat the bread of idleness, we must develop our talents,” he further explained.
“The third parable is dividing between the sheep and the goat and that is where the love of Labour comes out,” Gonsalves said. “If your neighbor is in need of shelter and food you gotta help. If your brother is in prison, do not turn away from him. You have to visit him and help him,” he stated.
“And all of us who are on this dangerous road to Jericho. We must not do like the Levite, we must not do like the priest, we must not do like the lawyer,” he said in reference to the story of the Good Samaritan.
“Where there is the wounded and the robbed each of us have to help up, bind up the wound, take that person to an inn metaphorically and see that they come to safety,” the Vincentian leader said.
He went on to implore party members not to just sit idly and wait for the leader to do things, but to do for themselves also.
The audience was also reminded of the second most important commandment in the Bible; “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.
“The first one is to love the Lord thy God and don’t have any graven images,” Gonsalves stated.
“This issue of good neighbourliness, of solidarity, of looking out for one another, is of paramount importance in the Labour family,” he said.
He called for unity, solidarity, faith and hope while explaining that faith was the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of that which we have not yet seen – another biblical reference.
According to Ralph Gonsalves the descriptions he had heard about his Saint Lucian counterpart Phillip J Pierre, reminded him of the words of the prophet Micah when he wrote; “what is required of us is to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.”
“And whether Saint Lucia progresses and moves forward…it is how you the people remain in communion with the leadership and they with you. If not there will be very difficult days ahead,” he put forward.
Before exiting the stage, Ralph Gonsalves offered this; “morning by morning, new mercies I receive, all that we need, thy hand that provideth, great is thy faithfulness.” The words are from the book of Lamentations, which some Biblical scholars describe as a collection of funeral poems on behalf of Jerusalem after its destruction by Babylon.
I listened to Mr Gonsalves at the SLP conference of delegates and among other things he beautifully highlighted was our beautiful Caribbean civilization.
Well there is rebel and rebel….the Grenada revolution of 1979 was a rebellion but in the negative sense. The rebellion took out through violent means a democratically elected government. In that sense it was not good to be a rebel. Given the challenges that the Caribbean faces, we a a region must come together to solve our issues and face challenges together. Focusing on our individual strengths can be of benefit. If each island can maximise their strength then we can deal with the challenges. Mr Gonsalves’ depth of intellect is very impressive, his use of metaphor and linguistic ability makes him interesting to listen to. He is a broad thinker and an intellectual. Two leaders that I rate extremely highly for their ability to get there message across with acuity are Prime Minister Mia Mortly of Barbados and Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent. Indeed our Caribbean civilization rose from the fever of a turbulent history and it’s a beautiful, vibrant civilization and long may it continue.
Now on the supremacy of god according to Mr Gonsalves.
It is no error to assume or presume that Prime Minister Gonsalves believes that god is the foremost reason for what this Caribbean civilization has become. But if one is honest, one will quickly realise this is far from the truth. For if PM Gonsalves believe that god has his hand in the success of this Caribbean civilization then equally he is also saying god also had his hand in the enslavement of the ancestors of the people of the Caribbean. For it is by this great human tragedy that the Caribbean civilization is what it is today. For You can not give the praise to god for today’s Caribbean civilization without taking into consideration how the Caribbean civilization started in the first place…it was started by the mass enslavement of people of African origin. Did god then allow this mass incarceration of melanated people, the brutality of it, the rape, the murder, the broken bones, the separation of families by selling them off to other enslavers, the long hours of working in the heat, the absolute depravity of the system for 400 years? So god allowed this horror just to produce this Caribbean civilization that we have today and which by all extent is not all paradise as we know. We still faced the forces of nature that continually seeks to destroy that very Caribbean civilization every year. So did god allow all this so that this fragile imperfect Caribbean civilization can be what it is today? So god sat on his throne for 400 years, watching the enslavement of melanated people and did nothing about it for 400 years? But he allowed it so he can create the Caribbean civilization we have today? I propose this is far from the it. The Caribbean civilization is what it is due to an injustice of history which arguably god himself is guilty of allowing and enabling and complicit and doing nothing for 400 years. This Caribbean civilization came about by the blood, sweat, tears and a lot of broken, battered bodies of melanated peoples. The English language doesn’t have words or the words have not been invented yet to describe the horrors our ancestors suffered for 400 years and still today their descendants face continued racism, discrimination, oppression in various forms and a whole bunch of other isms….We the descendants of the enslaved have worked hard to elevate ourselves from where our ancestors left off. So was god on the side of the enslaver? so that now many people who are descendants of the forcefully enslaved worshipping that same god who sat for 400 years on his golden throne (supposedly) and did nothing about this injustice to their ancestors?…F.O.R 400 Y.E.A.R.S ?…I find this one of the most contorted mental gymnastics one has to execute to believe this sky god pie in the sky nonsense. god ain’t helping or doing rien, nada, zilch, zok because he is either incompetent, impotent, useless or he does not exit. And I propose he does not exist. It is man who have created god in his (man’s) image and not god creating man in his image. god is a figment of man’s overactive imagination and delusion. Why is it then there are so many religions? Why is it that different civilizations have a different concept of what a god is? India has a long list of gods, china has Buddha, the ancient Egyptians had Ra, the ancient Greeks, and the Romans had another list of gods and the list goes on and it long …..so who has the monopoly of who god is? Who is correct and who is in erro? I can safely say, if our ancestors had depended on god for redemption, their ancestors would have still been enslaved to this day. But they rebelled, they fought, the run away from bondage, they fought back any way they can… perhaps it’s time we open our eyes to this pointless offering of praise to some unknown entity who clearly don’t give two rats tail about the Human condition and continue to build our Caribbean civilization utilising the tools that work. Education, education, education education, education, education and rid ourselves and minds of this superstition. You can indeed quote all the scriptures you want, it doesn’t change the facts of history. In fact the scriptures themselves are a bunch of fictitious stories being sold as divine inspiration….