Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves be­lieves For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers may be with­hold­ing key de­tails about the Nevis re­treat from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Gon­salves said one op­tion avail­able to the Prime Min­is­ter is to dis­miss him (Sobers) from Cab­i­net.

“She can fire Sobers and say Sobers omit­ted de­tails to me. Trump fired Pam Bon­di (for­mer US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al),” Gon­salves sug­gest­ed.

Speak­ing on Star Ra­dio in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines yes­ter­day, Dr Ralph Gon­salves ad­dressed Min­is­ter Sean Sobers’ claim that his re­mark to Cari­com of­fi­cials that he would be too sea­sick to trav­el to Nevis, where Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett was reap­point­ed with­out the knowl­edge of the T&T del­e­ga­tion, was made in jest.

“In the vil­lage where I come from, a joke for one kind of an­i­mal isn’t a joke for an­oth­er,” Gon­salves said.

He added, “So wait, the Prime Min­is­ter (Ter­rence Drew), they didn’t take it as a joke in St Kitts?”

Re­spond­ing to the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion that Sobers was in­ten­tion­al­ly barred from the re­treat, Gon­salves said the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter could have gone if he re­al­ly want­ed to.

Gon­salves, who was his coun­try’s head of gov­ern­ment for al­most 25 years, said Sobers could have cit­ed Ar­ti­cle 11 (2) in the re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which says “Any Head of Gov­ern­ment may des­ig­nate a Min­is­ter or oth­er per­son to rep­re­sent him or her at any Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence.”

“Who­ev­er would have told him that you can’t go be­cause it’s a heads-on­ly re­treat, he would have sim­ply said, no, no, no, no, no, I’ll be there be­cause Ar­ti­cle 11.”

Gon­salves is now ques­tion­ing if Sobers has left out key de­tails in his ac­count to Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“She would have said to Sobers, ‘Why didn’t you go to this re­treat, man?’ And he would have told her a sto­ry which is cen­tred on his dis­in­vi­ta­tion, and he might have omit­ted oth­er things.”

He added, “And Kam­la run with that pub­licly? But what is in­ter­est­ing now, Kam­la must be hav­ing sec­ond thoughts be­cause Kam­la is al­low­ing him to do all the talk­ing on it now. A doubt must be com­ing in her head be­cause she must be ask­ing, why is it you didn’t in­sist on Ar­ti­cle 11?”

Gon­salves said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has four op­tions: ig­nore the mat­ter, with­draw from Cari­com, take the is­sue to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice or re­move Min­is­ter Sean Sobers.

Gon­salves said that while he has heard Min­is­ter Sobers is a good per­son, he felt dis­re­spect­ed by the min­is­ter’s re­marks about his age.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day, Sobers re­marked that he usu­al­ly leaves “the el­der­ly” alone but is aban­don­ing that prin­ci­ple to re­spond to Gon­salves who ini­tial­ly raised the sea­sick­ness claim.

Gon­salves sought to re­mind Sobers that Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not much younger than him.

“I’m on­ly five and a lit­tle bit years old­er than Kam­la, you know. I don’t know what is the state of Kam­la’s health, but you lis­ten to Ralph, my brain in top shape and I’m do­ing all right.”

“So Kam­la should be watch­ing you. You have a bad mind about old peo­ple? What, you don’t have grand­par­ents? I plead guilty to be­ing old and I hope that young Sobers will come to my age and more.”

The for­mer Prime Min­is­ter said re­sort­ing to such at­tacks sug­gests the min­is­ter’s case is “weak.”

Gon­salves lament­ed that what he called a “Trumpian” way of abus­ing peo­ple has be­come nor­mal in the re­gion.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Sobers for a re­sponse. He re­quest­ed a record­ing of Gon­salves’ claims, which was pro­vid­ed, but no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.