‘When someone tells you you are helpless, fight them’– Deputy PM

Deputy Prime Minister Girlyn Miguel says she is not interested in sharing just yet the story about opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) parliamentarian St Claire Leacock.{{more}}

Miguel said in Parliament last month that she has saved the Central Kingstown representative “from the jail round there”.

She refused to withdraw the comment and Opposition legislators walked out in protest.

And Miguel spoke to the development at the Unity Labour Party’s convention on Sunday.

“Because I was kind, I was helpful and I am saying to you that I am prepared to fight,” Miguel told party members and supporters.

“You know why I got up and spoke out? It is because life and death is in the power of the tongue,” she said.

“When someone tells you you are helpless, fight them — they want you to sit down in a wheelchair and can’t help yourself; they want you to lie down in a bed and you can’t fan (shoo away) fly — don’t take that,” the deputy prime minister continued.

She expressed her gratitude to those who she said believed that she spoke the truth.

“If you notice, I gave his skeleton,” she said.

At the November 15 meeting of the House of Parliament, Miguel responded to a comment made by Leacock at a public meeting on November 8, where he had said that the deputy prime minister was “helpless”.

“I am useful enough to save him from the jail round there,” Miguel, who is also Minister of Education, told Parliament.

“He would not have been in this Honourable House had it not been for this woman named Girlyn Miguel,” she further said.

“But I would like to say ungratefulness is worse than the sin of witchcraft. I saved him from round there; he cried to me; I looked at him as my brother, and I had compassion, Mr Speaker. But yet he wants to say things about me,” she continued.

Leacock called for Miguel to withdraw the statement and indicated that he had never been accused, arrested charged or convicted for any criminal activity.

The Opposition walked out after Speaker of the House Hendrick Alexander failed to grant a request that Miguel withdraw her statement.

Leacock subsequently said on radio that politicians with skeletons in their closets should be on guard. (DD)