‘Please grow up!’, says Gonsalves

“Please grow up!”

Prime Minister Dr.Ralph Gonsalves made this appeal at a press conference on Tuesday, May 10, to persons who are critical of him pursuing his administration’s foreign policy by having to travel overseas.{{more}}

“Just grow up, for Heaven’s sake. We are in the twenty first century, and we are in a modern sophisticated society. Just grow up; just stop it,” said Gonsalves.

The pursuit of this country’s foreign policy is the reason he has to travel overseas from time to time, said the Prime Minister.

As a result of his administration’s foreign policy, Gonsalves said this country has been able to receive soft loans, grants, and scholarships from other states.

To this end, he said that he has to be an activist of the state’s foreign policy.

Gonsalves said when a country is a small state, the instrument of foreign policy for the country’s development is even more important than that of a large state.

“A small state has to utilise its foreign policy in an efficacious way to come to terms with its external environment which is increasingly hostile. And, to come to terms in an efficacious way with that hostile environment in a manner to lift, to enhance our possibilities in the interest of our own people,” said Gonsalves.

He said he often wishes that he doesn’t have to travel overseas. “But I have to do because I know it is my duty, and I know the benefits that such travel brings to St.Vincent and the Grenadines.”

“The criticism when you get it is a sort of a petty jealousy; it’s a sort of a tunnel vision. It’s a sort of spoilt sportism, it’s a form of nihilism and a sense of nothingness and no achievement and a kind of visionlessness. It’s all of those things,” said Gonsalves.