DR HAMID GHANY

Sir Paul God­win Scoon, GCMG, GC­VO, OBE, was born in Gouyave, Grena­da, on Ju­ly 4, 1935, and died on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2013. He at­tend­ed St John's An­gli­can School and Grena­da Boys' Sec­ondary School be­fore go­ing over­seas to pur­sue uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da.

Af­ter earn­ing the M Ed De­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, he re­turned to his na­tive Grena­da. He taught at his al­ma mater, the Grena­da Boys' Sec­ondary School and ul­ti­mate­ly rose through the ranks of the teach­ing ser­vice to be­come the chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer of Grena­da.In his civ­il ser­vice ca­reer, he rose to po­si­tions of sec­re­tary to the Cab­i­net and head of the Civ­il Ser­vice. In 1973, he ac­cept­ed the po­si­tion of deputy di­rec­tor of the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion in Lon­don.

In 1978, for­mer prime min­is­ter Sir Er­ic Gairy pro­posed to Sir Paul that he wished to lay his name be­fore Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth II for ap­point­ment as Grena­da's gov­er­nor-gen­er­al to suc­ceed Sir Leo de Gale. On Wednes­day Oc­to­ber 4, 1978, Sir Paul took the oath of al­le­giance and the oath of of­fice as gov­er­nor-gen­er­al at York House in St George's.

With­in months of his ap­point­ment, he was faced with the daunt­ing re­al­i­ty of the over­throw of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Grena­da by the New Jew­el Move­ment led by Mau­rice Bish­op on March 13, 1979.Bish­op and his com­rades es­tab­lished the Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment (PRG), and their ini­tial re­sponse to Sir Paul was one of hos­til­i­ty. Af­ter­wards, they adopt­ed a more con­cil­ia­to­ry ap­proach and al­lowed him to con­tin­ue to serve as a gov­er­nor-gen­er­al de­void of au­thor­i­ty.

That would ul­ti­mate­ly prove to be a tac­ti­cal blun­der on their part four years lat­er when a split emerged in the cen­tral com­mit­tee of the PRG be­tween loy­al­ists of Bish­op and those of Bernard Coard. Their dif­fer­ences were ir­rec­on­cil­able and the dream of their Marx­ist-Lenin­ist Grena­di­an rev­o­lu­tion col­lapsed in the face of vi­o­lence and may­hem.

On Oc­to­ber 12, 1983, Bish­op was placed un­der house ar­rest but was re­leased on Oc­to­ber 19. He went to Fort Ru­pert to plan his strat­e­gy with some of his al­lies for re-es­tab­lish­ing him­self as head of the gov­ern­ment. In­stead, mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army (PRA) cap­tured him and some of his min­is­ters and they were ex­e­cut­ed by fir­ing squad.

Gen­er­al Hud­son Austin, the head of the PRA, then over­threw the PRG and pro­claimed him­self to be the chair­man of a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Mil­i­tary Coun­cil (RMC). In or­der to en­sure that he could take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion and al­so have the time to dis­pose of Bish­op's body, he de­clared a 96-hour cur­few.The en­su­ing civ­il com­mo­tion and dis­or­der that de­scend­ed up­on Grena­da in Oc­to­ber 1983 led Sir

Paul to make a re­quest for mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Sir Paul as­sert­ed that he was the sole con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty, and he claimed the doc­trine of ne­ces­si­ty as the ba­sis for mak­ing his re­quest.

There has been much con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing this re­quest as no in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the Unit­ed Na­tions or the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States have any record of it. How­ev­er, in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, Sur­vival for Ser­vice (Macmil­lan Caribbean, 2003), Sir Paul re­counts his meet­ing in the gar­den of Gov­ern­ment House in St George's on Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 23, with David Mont­gomery, deputy British high com­mis­sion­er in Bar­ba­dos, as fol­lows:

"Alarm­ing thoughts like these were turn­ing over in my mind when Mont­gomery, who agreed with my con­cerns about the risk at­tached to the send­ing of a writ­ten re­quest on that day and who was due to re­turn to Bar­ba­dos that af­ter­noon, sug­gest­ed that I could per­haps au­tho­rise him to pass on the gist of my views to say, prime min­is­ter Adams, adding that I would not wish mil­i­tary ac­tion by friend­ly states to be in­hib­it­ed by the ab­sence of a for­mal re­quest from me. That be­ing so and hav­ing re­gard to the para­mount need for se­cre­cy, I would be con­tent for the mes­sage be­ing con­veyed (by Mont­gomery) to be re­gard­ed as pro tem, as such a re­quest with a for­mal writ­ten re­quest from me to fol­low as soon as a se­cure, prac­ti­ca­ble means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­came avail­able." (pp.135-136).

This was ob­vi­ous­ly the means by which the re­quest for a mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion was con­veyed. On Tues­day Oc­to­ber 25, Unit­ed States Rangers and Marines to­geth­er with Ja­maican and Bar­ba­di­an armed forces start­ed land­ing in Grena­da. All armed com­bat came to an end on Oc­to­ber 31.

Sir Paul had made a de­ci­sion in the face of ex­treme dis­or­der to act de­ci­sive­ly to re­store law and or­der. The Unit­ed States ac­com­plished three ob­jec­tives with their in­ter­ven­tion, name­ly (i) the res­cue of hun­dreds of Amer­i­can med­ical stu­dents at St George's Uni­ver­si­ty, (ii) the restora­tion of law and or­der, and, (iii) the re­pelling of a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist move­ment from Grena­da.

The ac­tions of Sir Paul in the af­ter­math of the cri­sis placed Grena­da on a path back to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment through the ap­point­ment of an ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil led by Al­is­ter McIn­tyre on No­vem­ber 8.Just over one year lat­er, gen­er­al elec­tions were held in Grena­da on De­cem­ber 3, 1984 and Her­bert Blaize and the New Na­tion­al Par­ty won hand­some­ly. Par­lia­ment was opened lat­er that month and Grena­da had re­turned to a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic way of life.

As a Com­mon­wealth gov­er­nor-gen­er­al, Sir Paul faced far more chal­leng­ing times than many of his coun­ter­parts whose lives would have been filled with more cer­e­mo­ni­al and less ex­ec­u­tive ac­tions.His care­ful and de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sions at a cru­cial time in Grena­da's his­to­ry would place him in a cat­e­go­ry that will be re­served for some­one who could be called "Grena­da's sav­iour".