DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has moved to dis­tance it­self from claims that en­ter­tain­er and Mara­bel­la West coun­cil­lor John Michael Al­i­bo­cus, al­so known as Makamil­lion, was sent to in­flu­ence elec­tion cam­paigns in neigh­bour­ing Caribbean states.

The con­tro­ver­sy arose af­ter footage cir­cu­lat­ed on­line show­ing Makamil­lion per­form­ing in St Lu­cia wear­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress T-shirt and pro­mot­ing the par­ty slo­gan “Yel­low is the Code.” The video al­so showed him en­dors­ing op­po­si­tion leader Allen Chas­tanet and his Unit­ed Work­ers Par­ty.

A voice note, pur­port­ed­ly from the artiste, sug­gest­ed he was “man­dat­ed” to trav­el to St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent to spread the mes­sage as both coun­tries head to the polls on De­cem­ber 1 and No­vem­ber 27, re­spec­tive­ly.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment, act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion of Gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment.

“I have no idea what Mr Makamil­lion is speak­ing of in terms of a man­date from any­one, whether it is a gov­ern­ment or the Cab­i­net,” he said.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, I think, had spo­ken late yes­ter­day evening, where she in­di­cat­ed very clear­ly that we do not in­ter­fere in the elec­tions of any sov­er­eign na­tion. How­ev­er, we can­not re­strict our mem­bers. Now I saw many of the Caribbean coun­tries; their colours are pret­ty much the same, sim­i­lar to what we have in Trinidad and To­ba­go in terms of rep­re­sen­ta­tive pol­i­tics—red and yel­low. ‘Yel­low is the code’ was some­thing that re­al­ly was catchy through­out the en­tire gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. We have been util­is­ing that slo­gan since the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion in 2023. So, I think Mr Makamil­lion has found fans through­out the Caribbean, and they thought, maybe, as part of their cam­paign, it may work for them as well. But there was no man­date from any­one in the Gov­ern­ment with re­spect to that is­sue.”

Padarath stressed that en­ter­tain­ers, in­clud­ing Swap­pi and Or­lan­do Oc­tave, are free to per­form and ex­press them­selves po­lit­i­cal­ly if they choose.

“While you have a po­lit­i­cal per­sona, there’s al­so the side of you that al­lows you to ex­press your­self freely, but there has been no man­date com­ing from any­one in terms of send­ing any­one to any Caribbean is­land from the Gov­ern­ment,” he re­it­er­at­ed.

The min­is­ter added that elec­tion out­comes across the re­gion must re­flect the will of the peo­ple, not ex­ter­nal in­flu­ence.

“We have seen in the re­gion where oth­er Caribbean lead­ers have tak­en that path. That is not the di­rec­tion in which we are fol­low­ing at all. It must be the will of the peo­ple, whether it is St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, wher­ev­er it is, and there­fore we will not par­tic­i­pate in any­thing to be an ob­sta­cle to the will of the peo­ple in those na­tions, in those coun­tries. How­ev­er, we al­so can­not stop en­ter­tain­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any oth­er medi­um, whether it is an elec­tion or con­cert, or what­ev­er it is.”

UNC Pro Dr Kirk Meighoo al­so de­nied that any man­date was pro­vid­ed to Al­i­bo­cus.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ar­gued the op­tics un­der­mined diplo­mat­ic norms.

“You would re­call that the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter ac­tu­al­ly has sup­port­ed the state­ments and ac­tions of Min­is­ter Roberts,” she said, re­fer­ring to re­cent rev­e­la­tions by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Anil Roberts that the spouse and two chil­dren of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves owned state-sub­sidised homes from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in Vic­to­ria Keyes.

“So if that is not some form of in­di­rect in­volve­ment in the elec­tion process, well, I re­al­ly don’t know what is,” Beck­les quipped.

At­tempts to reach Al­i­bo­cus by phone and What­sApp were un­suc­cess­ful.