The at­tack on St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves by pro­test­ers chal­leng­ing changes to the is­land’s Pub­lic Health Act to make vac­cines manda­to­ry for cat­e­gories of front­line work­ers, was a most vile act which strange­ly is yet to be con­demned by the Op­po­si­tion New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

The at­tack was beamed on live tele­vi­sion, as view­ers looked on in hor­ror as the Prime Min­is­ter was hit on the head with a stone. Fol­low­ing the at­tack, Dr Gon­salves was rushed to hos­pi­tal, treat­ed and sub­se­quent­ly flown to Bar­ba­dos for an MRI. He will be back home to­day in time to cel­e­brate his 75th birth­day to­mor­row.

Gon­salves had made it clear the pro­pos­al was in­tend­ed for cat­e­gories of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and would not in­volve a penal­ty or pun­ish­ment for those who failed or re­fused to take the vac­cine or con­duct a COVID-19 test. The un­con­trolled vi­o­lence, there­fore, was per­plex­ing.

One per­son has been ar­rest­ed and the at­tack has been wide­ly con­demned across the re­gion, with Cari­com chair­man Gas­ton Browne ex­press­ing con­cern that the at­tack came so close to the as­sas­si­na­tion of Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se — not­ing it con­veys a symp­tom of a grow­ing threat of vi­o­lence in the re­gion. In fact, the at­tack against Dr Gon­za­lves should be con­demned in the strongest way by all re­gion­al lead­ers, whether they sit in gov­ern­ment or op­po­si­tion.

Truth be told, there have been sim­i­lar protests around the globe by those who feel their right to refuse the vac­cine is more pow­er­ful than the rights of oth­ers.

In Flori­da, cas­es have grown ten times in the last six weeks. Yes­ter­day, White House press sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Psa­ki re­vealed they were dis­cussing op­tions for new vac­cine man­dates. Psa­ki said the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­cerned about an­ti-mask, an­ti-vac­cine man­date re­stric­tions in some states, and had told those lead­ers to get out of the way if they didn’t want to abide by pub­lic health guide­lines.

It is a tough stance. But the re­al­i­ty is that every coun­try in the re­gion, in­clud­ing T&T, is push­ing for all cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed. There are an­ti-vaxxers world­wide but it is un­con­scionable for those who dis­agree with a gov­ern­ment’s right to pro­tect the ma­jor­i­ty, to feel em­pow­ered enough to launch a vi­o­lent at­tack against a prime min­is­ter.

Dr Gon­salves was re-elect­ed to of­fice nine months ago, with his Unit­ed Labour Par­ty win­ning 9 of the 15 seats in Par­lia­ment. As such, his par­ty may not have an­tic­i­pat­ed hit­ting a stum­bling block with this in­tend­ed leg­is­la­tion.

Moves to pro­tect lives are al­so be­ing made here in T&T, with many com­pa­nies now re­quir­ing work­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed or un­der­take PCR tests at their own ex­pense to en­sure work en­vi­ron­ments are safe.

The world is bat­tling with a virus that has claimed mil­lions of lives and gov­ern­ments glob­al­ly are do­ing what they must to pro­tect cit­i­zens. The re­gion can al­so ill af­ford the on­slaught that will come with the new dead­lier Delta vari­ant.

Vi­o­lence and anger in the face of the un­known solve noth­ing. The end game must be pro­tec­tion for all. The on­ly way to achieve that is for cit­i­zens to un­der­stand their role in this war and to do the right thing by ac­cess­ing vac­cines.