Our Tsunami of political hatred

EDITOR: Several Old Testament Books describe the deliverance of the enslaved Israelites from their captivity in Egypt. Instructed by God, saved by His miracles, and lead by an earthly Moses, Yahweh’s Chosen People were eventually delivered to the Promised Land of milk and honey.

But their 40-year wandering through the desert was not easy, especially given the amount of internal betrayal by quarrelsome naysayers and seditious backstabbers. Chief among these were Korah and others who rebelled against their own people at every turn. According to Numbers, chapter 16:

“… Korah became insolent and rose up against Moses…. Then Moses said, ‘This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things ….’ As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households…. They went down alive into the realm of the dead…; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.”

We, in SVG, have our very own rude Korah. Her name is Luzette “Tsunami” King, said to be waging a year’s-long “lost patronage” vendetta against the Prime Minister. Now she has lead a band of Vincentians hell bent on subverting any effort made by our modern-day Moses, Ralph Everard Gonsalves, to bring us some badly needed milk and honey.

This is a heartless woman who begged for a tidal wave of Biblical proportions to destroy Argyle International Airport during its construction phase, an evil supplication that loud skeptics of the airport’s viability, like myself, could never have wished for.

This is the same silly woman who tried to beguile New Democratic Party fanatics with her illogical and extra-legal claim that the 2015 elections were stolen by the Unity Labour Party because, “The ULP cannot prove to Vincentians and the world, beyond any doubt, that they did not steal the elections.”

Who could possibly believe such a specious claim when formal logic says it is invalid to argue that an assertion must be assumed to be true (“the election was stolen”) because it has not yet been proven false.

Moreover, when a party that asserts a claim (election theft) that another party disputes (the ULP’s claim of free and fair elections), the party proposing the first claim has to substantiate that claim.

And only the most ill-informed person and their doltish believers would not know that election petitions are judged by the civil case standard of a “balance of probability.” Even criminal actions require conviction on a lower bar of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” not her unenlightened “beyond any doubt” standard.

Moreover, she is the unpatriotic woman who just betrayed our beloved country by sending a letter to several international bodies protesting SVG’s attempt to secure a two-year term on the prestigious and powerful United Nations Security Council (as reported in a Searchlight newspaper news item and editorial on Friday, June 7). Fortunately, her effort failed.

She is also a poster child for the Tsunami of political malice that slowly but surely is destroying our sense of national solidarity. While both parties are to blame, it is her NDP that has been consumed with this destructive emotion since 2001.

It is a sad day indeed when so many people hate their leader – yes, Dr. Gonsalves is the leader of all Vincentians – more than they love their country.

This hatred is sure to grow in a party for which this miracle-like international honour, and any financial and other benefits that may flow from it like Biblical milk and honey, must be a devastating shock, even a death blow. This explains why it took nearly three days for the NDP to acknowledge that it “takes great pride” in this achievement of a Security Council seat: the hierarchy of the party now knows that it has lost any chance of being propelled to power in the next election.

As for this champion of Tsunamis and the 67-person rabble who also signed her despicable letter, will their NDP comrades have the courage and integrity to do what the Lord did to Korah and his misguided followers, if only in a less lethal fashion, excommunicate any who are members of this once proud and honourable party, while publicly scolding the rest?

Don’t bet on it.

C. ben-David