By “One concerned citizen”
Sehon Marshall’s opinion piece, “A Nation Held Hostage by Political Intimidation”, reads as a passionate defense of public servants and a sharp critique of political thuggery. On paper, the argument is sound. In practice, the messenger makes it impossible to receive.
This is a man who, when he physically assaulted his wife, faced no meaningful consequences from the party he served so loyally. Instead, he was handed the position of Press Secretary and seated comfortably on government boards. The ULP’s message was clear: political loyalty is the greatest legal shield this nation has ever produced. Sehon Marshall did not challenge that culture — he benefited from it in the most personal of ways.
Then came the matter of his niece’s Ashelle Morgan connection to the shooting case — a case that gripped this nation and raised urgent questions about equal justice under the law. An unarmed man was shot. The political connections of those involved were obvious to every Vincentian. And yet, nothing came of it. That silence, that institutional inertia, that bending of justice around political relationships — that is precisely the culture of intimidation Marshall now pretends to diagnose from the outside.
He is not diagnosing it. He is a product of it.
The cause of accountability in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is real and urgent. The attack on Nadia Slater is serious. The protection of public servants from political victimisation matters deeply. But these causes deserve advocates whose hands are clean, whose records are unblemished, and whose moral authority cannot be dismantled in a single paragraph of institutional memory.
Marshall’s piece is carefully written — MSC, LLM credentials and all — but credentials do not confer credibility. Credibility is earned through consistency. A man who was shielded by the very machinery he now criticizes cannot suddenly emerge as its most eloquent opponent and expect Vincentians to forget what they know.
We are not so easily fooled. This nation has suffered too long under the weight of people who, for years, benefited from tyranny but are now hoping amnesia will do what accountability never did.
The concerns raised in that article deserve a proper champion. Anybody can carry this torch.
Anybody else but Sehon Marshall.
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