PRESS RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 18th 2018
Our beautiful homeland, St Vincent and the Grenadines, continues to beckon for help in the face of the seemingly uncontrolled crime wave that is ever-spawning. We must also add the discovery of the body on September 12, of 47-year old domestic, Yolande McMaster, taking the murder toll for 2018 to 24.
The recent incident on Saturday 15th September, when Dr. Reisha Twana Browne-Caesar, wife of Minister of Agriculture, the Honourable Saboto Caesar and consultant nephrologist at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, was robbed at knife-point as she was exiting her car at her home at Cedars in the South Windward area brought the crisis forcefully to the fore. No one is safe.
The high murder rates that have been visited upon St Vincent and the Grenadines under the reign of the Gonsalves-led, ULP administration, has unfortunately not been matched by a professional, scientific analysis of the problem. Instead, what we have is a significant attempt at downplaying the fearful impact that the crime wave continues to wreak on the nation. Clearly, Dr. Gonsalves and the ULP have lost touch with the reality of Vincentian people’s lives.
Today, Vincentians are being treated to the wanton disrespectful dismissal of their fears as basic ‘scare mongering’ and ‘spreading fear and alarm’ and a dismissal of 24 recorded murders in SVG as ‘episodic.’
The NDP is once again reminding Vincentians of its call on the Minister of National Security, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, to formally address the nation on government’s plans to deal with the worsening crime situation in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
He does not yet understand that crime and violence are not inevitable consequences of development. In any event, he has not produced the promised war on crime and the causes of crime just as he has failed to introduce integrity legislation, to say nothing of the creation of a consultative democracy.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines remains a blessed country. Evidence of this is our resilience to the vagaries of misdirected governance, high unemployment and underemployment and political demagoguery under an authoritarian leadership that dares to parade itself as democratic.
The NDP does not expect the Minister of National Security to respond to our call anytime soon and so we continue to urge the Vincentian public to remain as vigilant as they have been resilient. It is only through strong, united, caring communities can we address this crisis of crime and violence in SVG.
The NDP reiterate its willingness to work with the government and other organizations to address the problem. It is only with collaborative, united and caring communities that will enable us to succeed in combating the national crisis of crime and violence in SVG.
We again implore anyone with information that might assist the police in their investigations to provide it to the police and we call on the police to redouble their efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice, and to resolve other unsolved violent crimes in our country.
