Minister submits names for National Hero consideration

If this country’s Culture Minister has her way, Paramount Chief Right Excellent Joseph Chatoyer, the only National Hero of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, may soon get some company.{{more}}

At a press conference held last week to herald in National Heritage and Heroes Month, Minister René Baptiste announced that plans are underway to have three of this country’s national figures elevated to the position of National Hero.

“I have submitted a proposal to the Prime Minister, whose office is charged with the establishment of the National Heroes Advisory Committee, to consider the names George Augustus McIntosh, Ebenezer Theodore Joshua and Robert Milton Cato for the order of National Hero.”

“The Prime Minister has instructed that he would convene a meeting with myself and cause to be appointed the advisory committee to look at those names for the conferring of the order of National Hero.”

Baptiste indicated that there were laws governing the appointment of persons as National heroes, and a criteria which these persons must fit before being declared so.

She called on Vincentians to familiarize themselves with the faces and history of these men, who are deemed nation builders.

ET Joshua in his time was considered a champion to the poor and working class during the days of adult suffrage and beyond.

He served the people politically for close to three decades and died on March 14th, 1991, at the age of 83.

George McIntosh, a pharmacist, trade unionist and politician was also considered a champion of the poor, working class and religiously oppressed.

Robert Milton Cato, after whom the main hospital in Kingstown is named, was the first Premier and Prime Minister, and led St. Vincent and the Grenadines into Independence in 1979.

“I would like to hear Vincentian children speaking about ET Joshua… the way that the Barbadian public is aware of the life and times of Errol Barrow and the Grenadian public is aware of (Theophilus) Marryshow and the Trinidadian public of Eric Williams. Needless for me to say, every Cuban child knows Fidel Castro Reyes.”