Respect to man who ended Joshua’s career and dented the ambitions of James Mitchell

ON FRIDAY of this week the House of Assembly will pay its last respects to a former Parliamentarian, Offord Morris who passed away at the ripe age of 95. The tributes will be paid at the temporary home of Parliament in the Calliaqua/Glen area during a ceremony which precedes his official funeral.

Well known as a businessman and farmer in the South-Central Windward area, Mr Morris was also known for his political connections, though never a full-time politician. Those connections led to him agreeing to contest the 1979 general elections, the first after independence, as a candidate for the SVG Labour Party.

He ended up creating history in Vincentian politics.

Ranged against him were two former national leaders, the veteran Ebeneezer Theodore Joshua, our country’s first Chief Minister, and James Fitz Allan Mitchell, who was Premier from 1972 to 1974. Also contesting was the young Simeon Greene, one of the youthful candidates from the United Peoples Movement (UPM) which was attempting to upset the traditional apple cart.

To take on such heavyweights was a mighty task in the circumstances, but Morris stuck to his task.

Grounded among the people, he delivered a humiliating defeat to both Joshua and Mitchell. The latter, unbeatable in the Grenadines, was attempting to establish a personal foothold on the mainland using South-Central Windward as a base, arising from his quirky land reform programme during his Premiership. Joshua, the anti- colonial hero and veteran trade unionist had never lost an election since 1951.

Yet Morris trounced them both, registering a winning total of 1006 votes, to Mitchell’s 658, and Joshua’s 226 in last place, trailing Greene’s 383. In so doing he effectively ended Joshua’s political career as an elected Parliamentarian, a feat which would have been unthinkable before then.

Mitchell, exuding confidence about his chances, had to settle for runner-up to this part-time politician. So, between them the south-central neighbours of Morris (Lowmans Windward), and Greene (Diamond Village), combined to give Joshua a political burial and dent the hopes of the ambitious Mitchell, who had to return with tail curled between his legs, to Grenadine representation.

Nuff respect, Mr. Morris!

World’s biggest sporting spectacle begins

The world’s biggest sporting spectacle, the Olympic Games, will begin with an expected spectacular, though novel, Opening Ceremony in Paris today.

The novelty consists in the fact that the Opening ceremony which will attract the biggest media audience, will this time not be held in an enclosed stadium but on Paris’ River Seine. If nothing else, the novelty of this arrangement is bound to arouse huge international attention.

There is nothing like the Olympic Games in the modern world, not even the holding of the United Nations’ General Assembly. Like the Assembly, the Olympics opens participation, theoretically at least, to all the nations of the world, irrespective of size. Tiny St Vincent and the Grenadines, with its four participants, will take its place alongside giants like the USA, China, Brazil and the host nation.

The modern Olympiad as it is officially called, was revived in Greece in 1896 and held every four years, though negative global developments such as the two bloody World Wars and the deadly Covid pandemic which forced the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, have negatively affected the staging of the Games.

When the revival started in 1896 much of the world was under colonial rule so it was no surprise that the competing nations were mainly from those which had carved up much of the world between them. But as colonial rule steadily collapsed and more and more countries gained their independence, so too did participation rapidly increase and today athletes from Antigua and Barbuda, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso and Honduras can line up alongside those from the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the USA.

Originally, it was envisaged that the Games would be conducted in a spirit of “friendly rivalry”. However, the realities of the modern world are such that they are “anything but”. Petty nationalism and great power rivalry have rapidly transformed the Games into an intense show piece of the prowess of big nations. It is not just in sport either, because the enormous cost of staging such a spectacle has unleashed the rapacious multinational firms, each seeking through sponsorship, media deals, endorsements and marketing, to try and gain what they could out of the Games.

Financing for the Games ensures that only a handful of countries can host the Olympics. They were not held outside the Europe/ USA axis until in Melbourne, Australia in 1956, not in Asia until Tokyo in 1964, not in Latin America until Mexico City in 1968, and only twice in non-capitalist countries, Moscow, Russia in 1980 and Beijing, China in 2008. No African country has yet hosted the Games. Over the years the supposedly neutral Olympics has more and more become a political hotbed.

In 1936 for instance, despite Hitler’s ominous threat to democracy and human rights, Germany under Nazi rule was allowed to host the Games. Hitler promptly used it to spread his racist propaganda and philosophy. The 1968 Mexico City Games became renowned for the Black Power salutes of top black American athletes. By 1972 there was a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict with the infamous terrorist attack in Munich.

Political boycotts affected three successive Games -1976, 1980 and 1984.

Politics still plagues the Olympic movement. Thus, athletes from Russia and Belorussia have had great restrictions placed on their participation because of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

But the USA which devastated much of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war never had restrictions placed on its participation because of this, nor for its wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. More blatantly Israel is allowed to participate despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Yet as they say, “the Games must go on” and we can only wish our athletes, those of the rest of the Caribbean, including our neighbouring St Lucian medal hope, Julia Alfred, all the best in the Games. We also hope that our television access allows us to see as much of the games as is reasonably practical.

_ Renwick Rose is a community activist and social commentator.