Editor: My mother cautioned me, “It’s very easy to make an angel of yourself and a devil of everyone else.” So I begin by telling you I am worse than the publican in Luke 18:13. My children have different mothers. I drink alcohol, and attend church sporadically. I am a pilgrim with no progress. I must not cast stones. But I am no hypocrite, no chameleon, and no snake in the grass. So, I shun faking uprightness and reject deceit and the manipulation of the less fortunate as pathways to success. So what follows is unvarnished truth.{{more}}

At an NDP meeting, Jules Ferdinand paraded with a pitchfork. Many expressing shock, interpret this action as dangerously provocative and may incite violence. For me, it was indeed a symbol of violence, expletives, and deadly hate towards his political opponents. But I wasn’t surprised. Indeed I expect Jules to do much worse as elections get closer. On the day his candidacy was announced, I told Sehon Marshall that Jules is SVG’s most cunningly dangerous politician! I recently shared the said thought with Jimmy Prince. It made them think. Both had assumed that Jules’ angel-tongued patter evidences a charity-filled bosom. Illusion!

Jules’ party celebrates church violators. Its members are so steeped in vindictiveness that getting even with anyone who they perceived to have wronged them is their political raison d’être. Most are so imprisoned by stupidity and illiteracy they applaud arrogance and ignorance, as displayed by Arnhim in New York recently. This is Jules’ chosen company. And old people say “birds of a feather….” But let’s continue.

As dangerous as some conceive the known bad johns of the NDP to be, one could see their venom coming a mile away.

As one declared, they are “bold and emphatic!” They have no honey-laced tongues that hide the intentions of their hearts and heads. With them what you see, is what there is! Jules is a dark horse. He is a paradoxical problematic, the solution to which is an even more challenging enigma! Jules happily argues for and vehemently against one and the same thing, at one and the same time, and sincerely believes he will convince the listener he’s correct.

Weekly, Jules presents himself elsewhere in the press as a paragon of virtue. He is always preaching to us about morality and the like. Yet his gang desecrates churches, even when burying their own. Their stock-in-trade is lies, hatred and intimidation through slander and libel. The gang dreams of quartering the fatted calf among its few rich supporters, reducing the rest of us to begging alms. Victimization, character assassination, ostracizing, neglect and total abandonment are weapons of punishment it uses, not merely against political opponents, but anyone – including their own – who dare question them. Mrs Rishatha Nichols, Mrs Anesia Baptiste, Mr Anatol Scott and Sir James Mitchell – yes, the founding father – are some who have lived to tell the tale. EG Lynch was not so fortunate! Jules has now added a pitchfork to these weapons!!!

The gang has charlatans whose “limitless knowledge” qualifies them to denounce everything done in the interest of SVG. Some are completely incapable of any recta ratio exemplifying classic cases of reinforced stupidity and ignorance on steroids. How else one explains their idiotic comments about the Ecuadoreans, or that we export cattle because we can’t buy beef? Then there is one whose PhD makes him akin to Christ i.e. “I am the truth!” This mountebank expects Vincentians to lay prostrate, facedown, and worship his certified ability in doublespeak. Pathetic!!

During his pitchfork parade, Jules deliberately tried to deceive the public implying “Labour loves you” is gimmick. The fact is Labour had proven this love in every facet of Vincentian life before saying it. Anyone with a sandfly’s measure of honesty will admit this! But Jules seems to have lost all sense of truthfulness. If so, he is a prime and frightening example of moral decay of catastrophic proportions.

Jules’ recent behaviour shows that in place of a moral compass he has a terrible thirst for power. And, as Lord Acton postulated, such thirst corrupts. Still we are yet to see the worst consequences if he is totally morally and ethically debased. When the mind abandons reason, it becomes vacuous and a storehouse for insanity. When the heart banishes love, it transforms into a minefield of murderous hate. And when the soul defrocks itself of the garments of righteousness, it becomes inhabited by a most vile spirit.

I advise Jules that many have seen through his act, and while he remains murky to some, they too are now taking more than a prima facie look and will see he champions only his cause. He deludes himself with imaginations of being seen as a Vincy Mark Anthony, for Ralph is no Brutus to our people. Secondly, and very importantly, I mean no disrespect or dislike, and have no intention to hurt. I say these truths hoping that Jules will understand that sanctimonious grandstanding is not love. Love is as shown on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. And we know that Labour loves us, because they are dressing the wounds of 27.5 per cent desperate poverty; 67 per cent of students who had no place in a secondary; the thousand left to live squatter lives and too much more to mention. Jules’ party passed the other side while we lay suffering for 17 years. Then the ULP came along.

We were wounded, but are not blinded and so oblivious to facts. We have hearts and souls of gratitude, so we chose honesty over pretense, and shall be grateful rather than fooled; for we are reminded that from antiquity, the devil has been portrayed as smooth talking with a pitchfork in hand! This is Jules’ image of choice!

Dr Richard A Byron-Cox