On Sunday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves defended the Chairman of the CDC, Ricardo “Ricky” Adams, against what he thought were unwarranted attacks by a small group of critics.
Gonsalves’ statement came in the wake of radio and social media statements that the CDC members’ trip to Trinidad’s carnival was funded by the corporation.
On February 23, speaking on Boom FM, chairman Adams said the CDC board authorized payment for one single person to go to Trinidad and Tobago, and that person was the marketing and development office manager, Mr. Esworth Roberts.
Gonsalves On Sunday, speaking on the WEFM Issue at Hand Programme, said he just does not understand how anybody could be critical of the chairman of the CDC being part of a promotion team and paid for by the CDC or any other state agency to go to help with the marketing of St. Vincent Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago.
“Ricky, I don’t think that you should be defensive, and I don’t think that it is right and proper for you to go and do the work for the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines through the CDC and that you have to pay your own money. Even though you go normally to enjoy carnival, on this occasion you went expressly, primarily, if not exclusively, to do work for the Carnival Development Corporation, and you should not feel defensive about having the CDC provide the funding for you to have gone”.
“I don’t think that we must allow a tiny group of critics to undermine what are essentially good governance arrangements. I don’t know what the basis of the criticism is. What is the basis of the criticism?” Gonsalves asked.
Gonsalves said the CDC or some other government agency must be in a position to pay for the chairman of the Carnival Development Corporation to go to Trinidad as part of the promotion of carnival in 2023 in St Vincent and the Grenadines, and if that is the decision of the duly constituted board, then, that is what must be done.
“What is the basis of the criticism? Is the basis of the criticism that because CDC owes the other entities money, you must not go ahead and pay for the chairman to be able to have the carnival promoted? I don’t see the connection between those issues”.
“Ricky, as the prime minister of the country, I will tell you that you must not allow those kinds of parochial criticisms to get you or the CDC to not do things that are within the proper frame of good governance and proper expenditure of the CDC,” Gonsalves said.
