“Yet only the future is ours to desecrate…” – Shake Keane
By Ellis Providence
On Sunday, July 13, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves took to the airwaves on WeFM with Cecil Ryan, offering up a long-winded defense of his government’s latest political stunt: a hastily organized cricketing event to mark the 50th anniversary of West Indies in Test cricket.
But let’s not pretend. This is not about cricket. This is not about legacy. This is about fear.
What is lodged in Gonsalves’ craw, what is churning his stomach and giving him sleepless nights, is the man at the helm of West Indies Cricket: Dr. Kishore Shallow. A young, Black, articulate, and accomplished Vincentian. A son of North Leeward. A man with a doctorate in finance, unanimously elected president of West Indies Cricket, not by fluke or favour, but by the full confidence of the region.
And worse yet, in their eyes, he has the audacity to enter electoral politics on a New Democratic Party ticket.
This entire celebration, this supposed commemoration, is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded farce. A campaign event dressed up in national bunting. It is a panic move. A transparent, trembling response to the emergence of a credible, popular, progressive alternative. The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, after nearly a quarter century in power, is shaking in its boots.
This is not Carlos James versus Dr. Kishore Shallow.
This is Ralph Gonsalves, Carlos James, the entire Unity Labour Party, and the full weight of the government treasury and machinery locked in a bitter and desperate campaign to outshine, outpace, and cut down one man.
They cannot stomach the idea that someone of Dr. Shallow’s caliber, and with Vincentian roots, is both respected abroad and embraced at home. That someone like him could rally hope and signal a generational shift. That a new kind of leadership — intelligent, humble, unifying — is taking form before their very eyes.
So they launch distractions. They throw money at a cricketing gimmick and call it national celebration. But the people are not fooled. They see the desperation for what it is and the dignity in the man they are trying to diminish.
I suppose it is too much to expect that someone who is the longest-serving Prime Minister in the region would, even if not proud, at least restrain himself from attempting to disrupt the tenure of a fellow Vincentian who has reached the pinnacle of regional leadership. Instead, everything that could be done to block Dr. Shallow’s rise, or poison the well of public perception, has been done or attempted. Vincentians ought to see this for what it is. In the same way that the Caribbean has embraced Dr. Shallow, we too must rally around him even more. He represents the future — young, Black, competent, and progressive.
That future must not be desecrated. As Shake Keane so hauntingly wrote:
“Yet only the future is ours to desecrate,
the present is the past,
and the past, our fathers’ mischief.”
Let us not add our own mischief to theirs.
Dr. Shallow is not just a candidate. He is a symbol. And symbols scare old regimes, especially when they carry the promise of change.
If this is how far they are willing to go to cling to power, if this is the level of political theatre they will descend into to block one man, then let it be said clearly:
It is no longer governance. It is campaign-mode survival. And the stage is set not for a match, but for a reckoning.
Let the people decide who truly represents their future.
Ellis Providence
The Views expressed are not those of Asberth News Network