Dr. Lewis, please explain this to SVG

13.NOV.09

Editor: An article was published last week in a Welsh newspaper with the headline “Caribbean leader-in-waiting credits Welsh town that helped make him.” The article is also available online. It’s about Dr. Linton Lewis’ glory days as a swashbuckling cricketer in the town of Ammanford, Wales.{{more}}

Now, I don’t mind that Linton Lewis visited his old Welsh hometown and told some poor uninformed reporter that “as chairman of St Vincent’s New Democratic Party he is tipped to replace the party’s ageing president in the near future.” That’s for him to explain to the “ageing” Arnhim Eustace.

And I don’t grudge Dr. Lewis’ indulging in a little nostalgic trip down memory lane about his pioneering role as an overseas player. Nor do I mind him trotting out his half-baked “meritocracy” philosophy to the reporter.

Where I have a problem with is the following statement made by Dr. Lewis:

“This may be surprising but I felt far more comfortable in Ammanford than I did in my own country of birth. . . It moulded me into what I am at this time. It socialised me in a manner that to my mind is not only mellowing but edifying.”

If Dr. Lewis is “far more comfortable” in Wales than he is in SVG, that’s his business. But it becomes my business when he steps up on a public platform and tells me to vote against our home-grown Vincentian Constitution. How could someone who is more comfortable in the UK – someone who credits a stunning “90%” of his development “to my time in Ammanford” – ever be expected to understand and embrace a liberating Caribbean constitution?

Dr. Lewis, please do not masquerade as a Vincentian patriot when you are in SVG, and then a proud Welshman when in the UK. If you want to keep the old colonial constitution, make sure and explain to us that your preference is based on your own colonial mindset, and your fondness for your adopted home.

Then, at least, those of us who wish to emancipate ourselves from such tragic mental slavery could understand where you’re coming from. You say Wales “socialised” you. I call it something else.

Vincy Patriot