Here We Go Again, Dr. Cox!

19.SEPT.08

Editor: It was with utmost respect that I previously asked Dr. Richard Byron-Cox to “put up or shut up”. In the Searchlight of September 5th, he went to great lengths to explain the historical value of Balliceaux and Battowia, imploring Ralph to intercede and protect our heritage. Dr. Byron-Cox rightly observed that many of our Grenadine islands no longer belong to us.{{more}} I had cautioned some time ago that we would soon wake up and find ourselves trespassing in our own backyards with so much of our land being sold to foreigners. It fell on deaf ears.

The point is, what makes Dr. Cox believe that his lofty ideals and patriotic convictions will get him anywhere? Like Jomo Thomas who observed that Ralph had vowed to “jail the crooks and vagabonds in high places”, Byron-Cox remembers that Ralph promised to “right historical wrongs”, but if we didn’t know before, we should now know that “a promise (by the ULP administration) is a comfort to a fool.” Dr. Byron-Cox even seemed to contradict his values in his declaration that he was “fully prepared to march with him (Ralph) to Jericho,” should Ralph choose the noble path. And this is when I realized that Byron-Cox had taken leave of his senses. Ralph choosing the noble path. Dr. Byron-Cox further offered to share his ideas about how the economic possibilities of the islands could be optimized to our advantage as profitable entities of invaluable national worth. “I am willing to share my ideas on how this might be done,” he proffers. He will be snubbed. His ideas will only be implemented with ULP taking full credit, being the only outfit guilty of “political vanity”.

I’m hoping that Dr. Byron-Cox will permit me the honesty of declaring that his “hardenness” is annoying. Since he should dare ask if Ralph’s actions are “mere politicking”, let me reassure him that nothing is embarked upon by Ralph and his party without strategic political consideration. And to go the extra distance and implore Ralph to safeguard our children’s future, well, let me ask the good Dr. Cox if our children’s future is safeguarded when, as Kenneth John rightly noted, school girls are forced to prostitute themselves for school supplies, when homeless children scuttle from corner to corner like street rats, and when the desperation of such poverty converts children and adolescents alike into professional thieves, with immediate and long-term ramifications in terms of impact on criminal statistics.

Dr. Byron-Cox, you are still hanging on to expectations of honour and decency. It’s time to be a realist because in so doing you will see clearly the predicament of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and hopefully be so catapulted into action. Let this serve as a catalyst for you to direct your energies into the type of nation-building, and more specifically nation-preservation, that are at once so necessary and so sadly lacking in what can only be seen as economic suicide “masquerading as development”.

John Smith