As is now the distinct trend globally, the capable women of St. Vincent and the Grenadines are being called out by the circumstances currently prevailing in our land to assert themselves in the playing of a more decisive role in the determination of the way forward for our country and its people.
Quite clearly the point at which we are in St. Vincent and the Grenadines today, in terms of the socio-economic and political development of our people, is nowhere close to the point at which we ought to have been after almost fifty years of being an independent nation.
We are clearly not on the same road we thought we had set out on in 1951 with the advent of “adult suffrage”, when the people elected a government, a group of men and women to advance their interests. The hope for the development of the people was not an unreasonable expectation in the Conrad Charles and Ebenezer Joshua era. We were then, just over one hundred years since the abolition of slavery, still an agriculture-based society and were renowned for our Arrowroot Starch and Sea Island Cotton. That was the platform Ebenezer Joshua endeavoured to build on. The historians must document that the main criticism against him was – “All he is doing is building roads and schools”.
Today, over seventy years on, those same roads are now impassable and we are unsuccessfully endeavouring to eke out a living from Tourism on which our administrators of the last almost forty-years have been putting their emphasis. In the process, “smart-men” posing as wealthy investors have been ripping us off with the “blessed approval” of our “shallow administrators”.
Miss Margaret London has been for some time exhibiting her capacity to facilitate the discussions which we as Vincentians should feel impelled to involve ourselves, so that serious societal upheaval could be averted. The men are distinctly impotent in this regard while Margaret London’s contributions may well prove to be valuable!
LeRoy Provridence