“your good name is everything” this according to Hon St Clair Leacock MP for Central Kingstown, Leacock made the point as he spoke on Nice Radio on Friday night.
Leacock said, “I have given tremendous service to the NDP and country, and I feel that I have a right whenever it is occasioned to defend my name and my integrity”.
“So in the parliament on Thursday 15th December when I completed my presentation, as I said none of my colleagues and me have had an exchange of words or embrace since the election of Dr. Friday as leader”.
“I took a bold step to say let me bring this to an end, and I ask the speaker permission to shake hands with every single member or parliamentary colleagues, it’s an olive branch let’s start afresh”.
“it’s not just unity, we can’t have children and be afraid to reprimand them, and if things at times are not where are they should be, we really should not have to wash our linen in public, but if you talk one, two and three times, you would hope that your children take heed, and when that does not happen what do you do, you have to bring discipline to the person or persons Leacock stated.
“When I speak of like this people going to say Major say the party have no discipline, I did not say that you know, am saying let’s forget the party, if we don’t do the work we have to do we will over swell the crowds in Sion Hill next election and in Victoria Park and we may lose”.
Why? “ the fundamentals that are required to have a party come to victory are not being attended too, am trying to say it in a simple form, and people will say where were you Leacock, what did you do about it, ah screaming, ah bawling murder, am saying let us do the work”.
“I just got home from doing my political work. It’s the one person the people will tell you we see all year round, this is the discipline you know, and I work right through the weekend”.
Leacock said after he shook hand with colleagues in parliament on Thursday, he went over to his political leader Dr. Godwin Friday, “ you know what he said I don’t want any shake hand, I want an embrace, we hugged each other, so tell me, so far what did I do wrong on Thursday he asked the host “.
Leacock said he is not responsible for newspaper headlines because each owner wants their paper to be sold, “am sure if I had no commitment to NDP, I could have been on the other side on Thursday, am confident of that, and I gave a statement, “I said politics is thicker than blood”.
The MP said money in St Vincent is thicker than politics, “but you see for me, principal is bigger than money, “character, morality, integrity, does not have to come out of an air condition office or a luxury vehicle, there are some things I would defend to my dying day.”
Leacock further told the host of the program that, ” if my past president Arnhim Eustace had taken the stand I took on this whole process that we mismanaged, everybody would have exalted him of how clean, how principled, how decent, how statesman or how you had conduct yourself”.
“I am being chastised for doing the right thing, it should not be so, that’s all am saying, why must I retreat, where did I go wrong, I have put this behind me and will continue to lend service, and I will be very clear about this, the people told me if I leave the party, “they will kill me”.
“I can’t disappoint them, it is for my colleagues to catch up with me, I hope they get it”, to which the host replied, I hope they are listening.
“The level of politics that my party is practicing now is insufficient to see us into government we have to shape up, do that which is required, not to disappoint the 30,000 which voted for us, not to be on social media chastising me.
“ I have never said it before, at the end of 2010 election Sir James and the international financiers was backing me to take over the party, I refused, I said I will never do that to Mr. Eustace I will stand by him, if I had taken that offer it would have been very different today”.
Leacock said, “ it is time people gave me my due, I have been there for 35 long years, I lost everything, I could have done like others, I could have left for foreign lands to lecture, come home part time, I could have been having a totally different life”.
“ Dr. Friday spoke in parliament on Thursday he said those who want to create mischief should find something else to do, stop point your bows and arrows at me, go and do the work”, Leacock said.
