Vying in the next election to be the representative for the constituency of South Central Windward, Israel Bruce took the stage to chants of “cutting loose with Bruce” to address ‘his people’ at a rally last Sunday.

Of all the speakers at the Greiggs Primary School at the New Democratic Party (NDP) Convention last Sunday afternoon, Bruce was greeted with a higher level of enthusiasm, with some of the crowd gathering near the stage to dance with him.

Other speeches at the rally included those by Leader of the Opposition Dr Godwin Friday, former leader Arnhim Eustace and supporters from the sister parties in the region from Grenada and Dominica.

Bruce began by addressing the crowd about the announcement he had made previously on the stage of the last NDP rally, which spoke to the legalizing of small amounts of marijuana.

“On that platform I said, and I asked my colleagues to support me into the future, that we look towards not putting our young people within the frame of criminal enterprise because they are found with a simple spliff,” he recalled.

Expanding, Bruce said when someone is arrested for one spliff, gas is wasted to drive him to town, and government time is wasted in preparing a case.

He called the medical marijuana intiative that is being proposed by the government a hoax, designed to fool the farmers.

He indicated that he would not practice false promising, and promised, “My friends, if you approach me, and you say to me ‘Israel, I need X to do something,’ and I can’t help you, I look you square in the face and say ‘Well Gaylee, I can’t help you with that right now. Check me in about a months time, and if I could help you, I would help you.’”

There was one thing that Bruce indicated that he could not leave without saying, beginning, “If I don’t say this today on the platform, some part of me going hurt me. Last night a group of youngsters decided to create a nice pathway for you to come to the convention. So they decided when you get to Maroon Hill we will start to build a pathway via some templates and paint, to go all the way to Union Gap and to guide you home into Greiggs.”

“Three o’clock in the morning, that lazy son of a gun, leave he wife in bed and find heself in Lauders, with a team of people to rub off paint,” he stated.

To laughter he shouted, “You know what we have there? We don’t have an effective representative, we have a paint rubber!”

He said that this was done because a road was set to be opened in that area, and, “so they didn’t want to see no yellow paint in Lauders. But I tell them, I was on the road early… they came at three… ‘Ketchup them a play, man ah pepper!’”

He gave his commitments to the people of South Central Windward as, “Commitment number one, is to work with Dr Friday and the rest of the team to provide quality jobs for the people of this constituency. Commitment number two is to work with Dr Friday and our team to ensure that we provide quality jobs for the people of this constituency, and commitment number three is to work with Dr Friday and the rest of this team to provide quality jobs for the people of South Central Windward!!”

“I do not intend to go to Kingstown and become lazy… I ain’t lazy now, I ain go lazy then, so I tell Dr Friday, I tell Major Leacock, I tell Mr Eustace, I tell Patel Matthews, when I come to Kingstown, I come there for serious business for my people,” he ended.