St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves says “un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts” had been made to im­pugn the char­ac­ter of the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) Dr Hy­gi­nus “Gene” Leon, whom he de­scribed as “a dis­tin­guished son of our Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion from St Lu­cia”.

Last month, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Leon, gave the CDB un­til May 4 “to ne­go­ti­ate an am­i­ca­ble sep­a­ra­tion” in­di­cat­ing al­so that their cor­re­spon­dence should be viewed “as our client’s pre ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter” re­gard­ing the en­tire sit­u­a­tion.

In a five-page let­ter sent to the chair­man of the CDB Board of Gov­er­nors, Ahmed Hussen, who is al­so Cana­da’s Min­is­ter of In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, Gon­salves said the in­ves­ti­ga­tor’s re­port is “avail­able to those en­ti­tled to it as a right”.

“I have read it care­ful­ly. Its con­tends are thread­bare and un­der­whelm­ing. The re­port seeks to weave tat­tered threads in­to a twist­ed fab­ric up­on which to ground a nar­ra­tion to jus­ti­fy the Bank’s ac­tions; but it has failed, and all per­sons of rea­son­able­ness, ju­di­cious tem­per and bal­anced judge­ment, would so con­clude.”

Gon­salves wrote that on the cen­tral sala­cious al­le­ga­tion “which ex­cit­ed the pruri­ent at home and abroad, there was ab­solute­ly no ev­i­dence; the sto­ry makes amus­ing read­ing, if the mat­ter of the Bank’s Pres­i­dent’s peremp­to­ry re­moval from of­fice was not so se­ri­ous.

“This al­le­ga­tion, and the im­pu­ta­tions con­nect­ed there­to, prob­a­bly had its ori­gin in a mind suf­fused by a starched An­gli­can­ism, or an ob­ses­sive Evan­gel­i­cal pu­ri­ty laced with hypocrisy and misog­y­ny,” he added.

Gon­salves said that the “flim­sy” na­ture of the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the in­ves­ti­ga­tor’s re­port and the “con­coct­ed nar­ra­tive of malfea­sance or wrong-do­ing, lack per­sua­sive­ness; there is noth­ing com­pelling here.”

He said for him, “Gene Leon’s in­tegri­ty re­mains in­tact, though un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts were made to have it im­pugned. He comes out of this sor­did mat­ter with­out blem­ish or wrong-do­ing at­tached to him. This dis­tin­guished son of our Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion ought not to be lynched, metaphor­i­cal­ly, any fur­ther.”