Together at Christmas in Peace, Love, Faith and Fresh Hope

Christmas Message by Dr Ralph E Gonsavles, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines

Our Caribbean civilisation, inclusive of its magnificent Vincentian component, embraces the commemorative birthday of Jesus Christ with a traditional spirit of togetherness in peace, love, faith, and a renewed sense of hope. It is a time when we rightly prioritise family get-togethers, good neighbourliness, community spiritedness, national unity, and individual reflections on life and living now and for the future. It is a season to engender joy and happiness even amidst personal pain, community travails, national challenges, and global turmoil. We especially acknowledge that whatever the ups and downs of the past and present, only the future is ours to desecrate. So, we seek to ensure that we are on the right track going forward, individually and collectively, with the power of an amazing grace.

Always, our Christmas celebrations, reflective of our values and traditions, flow from the genius of our people: Nine Mornings; joyous church services; lighting-up of homes and communities; the special foods and drinks, even in the humblest abodes; parang and soca especially created for the season; the beach and river festivities; sports and games of one sort or another; giving and sharing selflessly in innumerable ways with neighbours and strangers; eating in, eating out; helping coworkers who are in difficulties; decorating locally-sourced Christmas trees; making the children, the wife, husband, partner, mother, father, grandparents, especially happy, showered with abundant love; and much, much more.

Oft-times we take all of this for granted until we begin bit-by-bit to lose it all under the weight, attractions, and distractions, of a globalised culture which threatens through the external media and consumerism, to impose a cultural homogeneity and rob us of our especial Caribbean and Vincentian distinctiveness, but especially so at Christmas which admittedly is a universal celebration. The necessity and desirability is to ground the universal within the context of our own particularities, in our own image, likeness, sense, and sensibility.

This year it has been wonderful to welcome our friends from Bangladesh in the T-20 Cricket Series against our West Indies on December 15th , 17th , and 19th at the majestic Arnos Vale Sporting Facility, under the lights. This year, too, is the first time ever in the Caribbean, or perhaps elsewhere, for a Prime Minister in concert with celebrated local artistes to create and produce in song a very popular soca parang hit entitled “Tell me what you want for yoh Christmas”. It is bringing joy, and fun, to almost everyone, save and except those permanently and unchangeably unhappy souls stuffed with political bile, grounded in an angry partisanship, in a perpetual war with themselves.

Christmas In the Shadow of Beryl

Christmas 2024 is celebrated in the shadow of Hurricane Beryl which severely damaged St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a whole, and devastated particular areas, especially the Southern Grenadines. The government in tandem with a resilient people, in partnership with some friends from overseas, are in the long and arduous task of relief, recovery, and reconstruction. Significant progress has been made through multiple initiatives, including those in housing, production and income supports. Still, much more work is to be done; and we will get there, day-by-day sweet Jesus. It is necessary and desirable for all of our nation to remember the thousands of affected, and displaced, persons, including the 500 or so who are still in shelters, and the approximately 600 who are in touristic accommodation (guest houses and apartments), courtesy of a caring government. The children and the elderly among the displaced are daily in my thoughts and actions.

Violent Crime At Christmas

In the run-up to the Christmas season, there has been a spike in the number of killings, committed by a minority of young males in associational groups who have chosen this violent path, seemingly as a way of life, financed largely by the trafficking in cocaine and marijuana, weaponised by illegally imported guns and bullets. The evidence that their young lives end up in jail or the cemetery, appears not to deter them in their criminal recklessness, destruction of other lives and theirs; they erroneously think that lady luck would save them from jail and likely death-by-reprisal, but they are reassured that their necks will not end up in the hangman’s noose because of the unfortunate decisions of our Court of Appeal and the Privy Council in respect of the non-application of the death penalty on the statute books for the crime of murder in its mandatory aspect.

It is evident to all, save and except political opportunists and some wrong- headed social scientists, that the war against violent crime and violent criminals is a complex one demanding an all-of-society corrective approach. The non-state institutions (parents, family, communities, churches, non-governmental groups, the media, the legal progression, etc., have critical roles to play; so, too, the state institutions (the Parliament, the Cabinet, the Police, the Coastguard, Prisons, Customs and Immigration
Departments, Prosecutors, the Magistracy, the Supreme Court, the schools, and various Ministries touching and concerning rehabilitation and social supports). These considerations are at the heart of an all-of-society approach pursued by the government. And the state institutions must work optimally in the fight against crime. But let us be clear: Violent criminals who commit these cold-blooded killings do so out of choice, grounded in greed, fuelled by money from drug trafficking and crimes against property; those who are mentally ill are an exception here for differential treatment. Thus, criminal conduct of the mentally sound must never be excused on the grounds of supposed poverty or unemployment; that is dangerous, sentimental mush with no credible scientific basis. It is a cop-out that justifies the choices of the violent criminals. Our society must be clear on this! The violent criminals must not be permitted to secure public acceptance of their efforts to socialise their choices and privatise their greed and gains.

Forward To 2025

Early next year, the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditures will be presented to Parliament for debate and approval on January 3rd ; and on January 6th , the Appropriation Bill will be presented to Parliament, kicking- off “the Budget debate”; consequent upon these deliberations the Bill is expected to be approved.

I assure everyone that the Estimates and the Appropriation Bill are crafted to suit our precise circumstances in every material particular. Like Issachar, the leader of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, who in the Book of Chronicles was esteemed because “he knew the times and acted accordingly”; so, too, will our government. Immense progress is being made for, and by, St. Vincent and the Grenadines despite our challenges and limitations. Our possibilities and our strengths propel us; we are on the right track. Let us so continue in peace, love, faith, and renewed hope.
Happy Christmas 2024!

Let us make the New Year far more peaceful and more prosperous for all!