Prime Minister laments slip in moral and spiritual development

As Vincentians prepare to celebrate 27 years of nationhood a dire warning comes that there is unbalanced development taking place which could lead to social gains being rolled back.

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves in his Independence Day message warned that if the trend is not arrested it could lead to “our nation’s undoing”.

A large chunk of his address resembled that of a fatherly lecture about material and spiritual development.

On the one hand, the nation was becoming affluent but neighbourliness was diminishing. {{more}}

The nation was doing well, he said. Incomes have risen, the physical infrastructure has improved, there’ve been advances in all sectors, poverty has declined and the quality of governance has improved but the spirit of being your brother’s keeper was fading.

“Particularly in the last five years, social and material achievements at the individual and national levels have been impressive. These advances, however, appear not to have been accompanied by a parallel lifting of that which feeds the spirit and the soul,” he lamented, pointing to an increase in vices, inhumanity, and indescribable violent crimes.

“Good neighbourliness is diminishing, falsehoods routinely become the currency in which too many who oppose the Government, traffic. The lowest common denominator is paraded as the ideal standard on much of talk-show radio, public discourse is conducted with an unacceptable coarseness by many who seek power, crass individualism devoid of social responsibility is rampant, a dog-eat-dog attitude is growing, criminality and vagabondry are accorded a veneer of respectability in some sections of our society, treasured civility is dismissed as old-fashioned, the worst features of ghetto life in American cities are being emulated as worthy, and a tawdry imitativeness is paraded as creativity,” he said.

He called on Vincentians to rise above the spiritual mire and return to values that would properly complement their material affluence.

Bishop Sonny Williams, in his message put it another way: “righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people”.