ULP launches 'Vote Yes' campaign in St Vincent and the Grenadines
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| Published on Thursday, October 8, 2009 |
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Vote Yes Rally
KINGSTOWN, St VIncent -- The governing Unity Labour Party (ULP) in the tiny Caribbean country of St Vincent and the Grenadines, led by Ralph Gonsalves, marshaled its supporters and they turned out in their thousands to a massive rally in the North Windward area of Rabacca where a bridge was constructed two years ago over what is termed the 'Dry River'.
Three weeks ago, the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) launched its Vote No campaign at its party headquarters in Kingstown and it was no comparison with what took place at Rabacca on Sunday.
The atmosphere at Rabacca was electric and even though the ULP dubbed the Yes Vote launch as a “family affair” and urged their supporters not to wear the party's 'battle gear,' red, the day had all the trappings of an election campaign and showed that the ULP was ready to go the distance in the next few weeks to get the 66% vote necessary to change the 1979 constitution.
On September 3, 2009, the Constitution Bill was passed in parliament, after the Government used its more than two thirds majority in the House and this paved the way for a referendum to be placed before the people on November 25, 2009.
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| St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves |
The Government is seeking to replace the 1979 constitution, which was handed down by Britain in 1979 after the country gained political independence. The Opposition has served notice it will be asking persons to Vote No, since it is not satisfied with some of the articles in the proposed constitution.
In rallying his 'warriors' to the Vote Yes cause, Gonsalves reminded his listeners that when the country was to attain Statehood (internal governance) in 1969, those who were not in favour of such a move made the call for the country to remain under complete British rule.
“In 1979,, when we were on the threshold of becoming independent they said then we were not ready; that we must stay as a colony. The pulse of the people decided otherwise,” Gonsalves said.
Gonsalves used the occasion to remind his listeners that in 1977, “on the threshold of independence,” James Mitchell, founder of the NDP and who led the country for the period 1984 until 2000 when he gave up the job as Prime Minister and handed over the mantle of leadership of the NDP to Arnhim Eustace, was one of the persons who felt the country should remained under Associated Statehood.
“He said we were as safe as sardines,” Gonsalves quoted Mitchell as saying then.
Mitchell has joined forces with his NDP colleagues on the platform as he make his call for people to Vote No in the referendum.
“It is the same James Mitchell, who today who is telling us that the Queen is not interfering with anybody and we are not ready to have our own system of justice,” Gonsalves said. "Every time at the the moment of history, a moment of extraordinary significance for our nation, Mitchell represents forces which are backward and which which does not consider that our people possess the capacity to lift themselves up by their own boot straps and mark out their own destiny.”
The proposed constitution, if it becomes law, will remove the Queen of England as the country's Head of State and replace her with an executive President and will also see the removal of the Privy Council as the country's final court of appeal.
Mitchell is against these removals and is pitching for persons to vote no on November 25.
“I want all of us to get out of our heads the colonial idea that we can't get our own home-grown non-executive Head of State call a president,” Gonsalves said.
“Queen Elizabeth II, I have met the queen, I have communicated with her. She is a wonderful lady and a wonderful Queen for England but how can the Queen of England be the queen of St Vincent and the Grenadines? What are we to tell the children that someone who is not one of us holds the most elevated position in our country? And people like Mitchell and Eustace say she doesn't trouble us, she doesn't interfere with us.
“She represents an elitism; an alien set of ideas not connected to the soul and bosom of our people and we have to free ourselves of these restrains; free our minds from the mental slavery, which these colonial concepts have put a prison wall around us and we have to break them in order to be more creative and more confident in ourselves as human beings," he said.
Gonsalves says the proposed constitution is grounded n the people and not the Queen of England and says it has been acclaimed the world over as the best which exists of any parliamentary type.
Gonsalves said the constitution enhances fundamental rights and freedoms, strengthens the rule of law, bolsters the separation of the powers between the judiciary on one hand and the parliament and the executive on the other, it extends and deepens parliamentary democracy in a manner no where else in a parliamentary democracy anywhere in the world and it presents the most advance framework of good governance available in any parliamentary system anywhere in the world.
“This referendum election is not about the ULP or the NDP. This campaign is for the nation, this is an issue larger than party, this is an issue which is more important than anything we have address since independence in 1979,” Gonsalves said.
“I want to ask that the people of this country to put aside partisan bitterness and to look for love of country and Vote Yes,” he said. | | | | Reads : 1096 | | | |
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