CARIBBEAN-PM Gonsalves says the letter to CDB speaks for itself

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves says he has been informed that “a couple of persons in the bureaucracy” at the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) are saying “nobody should pay attention” to his May 2, 2024 letter in which he criticized the approach taken to remove the Bank’s President, Dr. Hyginus “Gene” Leon.

In his five-page letter to Ahmed Hussen, the CDB Board of Governors chairman and Canada’s Minister of International Development, Gonsalves described Leon as “a distinguished son of our Caribbean civilization from St. Lucia.”

Gonsalves was critical of the “flimsy” evidence in the investigator’s report, ultimately leading to Leon submitting his resignation effective May 4. He suggested that the region’s premier financial institution seek an amicable settlement.

“It certainly does not suit the Bank to have its folly forensically examined in excruciating detail in the robust legal system in Barbados or elsewhere. I do not have to read and spell for the Governors of the Bank: the Former President, Mr. Leon, has been injured, and he has suffered loss and damage: certain things flow inexorably from all this. The Bank ought to address this with the same urgency with which it acted at the start of this awful saga, and the Bank ought to act with a large generosity of spirit,” he wrote.

Speaking on the state-owned NBC Radio, Gonsalves said he knew his letter to the CDB governors, which was also copied to regional leaders and the Secretary General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), had been “clearly leaked.” Listen to audio

He told radio listeners that he had no intention of discussing the letter now, “as the Latin scholars say, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.”

But he said he wanted to address the issue, adding, “It has come to my attention. I don’t know how truthful it is. Someone texted me and said they were talking to a couple of people in the bureaucracy at the CDB who said nobody should pay any attention to Ralph’s letter because he’s not a member of the Board of Governors.”

Gonsalves acknowledged that he is not a CDB governor but that “you have two governors appointed by the particular government to represent their country. Some are prime ministers who are ministers of finance.

“There’s no stipulation as to who should go; it’s whom the government decides to send,” he said, noting that his son Camilo Gonsalves, who is also the Minister of Finance, is the island’s governor on the Board of Governors of the CDB.

“Now, while I’m talking to you here today and those persons, I can ask if the report is valid from a couple of people within the Bank’s bureaucracy because they probably don’t like the content. Those comments would tell me they don’t like the letter’s contents.

“And I don’t know if they were engaged with anything in this matter. But while I’m talking here, which I will not do, I can, as Prime Minister, say, ‘Angie (Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister), will you prepare a letter for me and write the bank to tell them that as of this morning Camillo is removed as a governor, and I am the Governor, and I will attend the next meeting.’

Gonsalves told the radio program that he would not do so because the finance minister “can represent the position of the government, which is the position which is articulated in this letter, better than me.

“And I know that at the last meeting of the Board of Governors, he represented the position very well and will undoubtedly do so again with eloquence, firmness, clarity, and perhaps in language, which I may not be able to muster.”

Gonsalves said that “is the same kind of narrow-mindedness, if proper, why we got here in the first place with this particular dissonance between the President and the Bank.

“Let me state for clarity and completeness that, if those reports are true, such persons in the Bank who would have made adverse comments about the letter privately would not include the vice president of the Bank, who is a splendid professional, a Vincentian.

“I have known him since he was a boy. I’ve seen him grow into being one of the top professionals in his field, not just in the Caribbean.

“More than that, he’s not interested in being the President of the Bank. So people want to say what they want to say, but I think I must defend my friend, my Vincentian brother, not only because he’s my friend and a Vincentian brother, but also because I know his quality and his professionalism.”

Gonsalves said he was sure that Vincentians would appreciate him saying what he had been saying on the radio program.

“But at the same time, I made the point. If the reports that I received that you have this or that to the person in the bureaucracy — I do not what level — want to run off their mouth like this, about the letter written by the Prime Minister that doesn’t go down that path of folly. Just pull up your brakes, pull up your brakes, pull up your brakes.

“Of course, I’ve received high praise from people in the region who matter to me for the letter. And I’m hoping that all those concerned will follow the advice I’ve tendered in this letter,” Gonsalves added.

St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre blamed a “conspiracy” for removing Leon earlier this week.

“I want to put on record St. Lucia’s full support for the work that Gene Leon did at the Caribbean Development Bank and to regret that a conspiracy, and I make no bones about it, and this is not personal to anybody, to any function to the bank, a conspiracy is what caused Gene Leon to resign,” Pierre said in a six-minute statement to the St. Lucia Parliament during a debate on a financial issue.

“We must stop treating our people like that based on conditions or based on circumstances that are foreign to us, Mr. Speaker. What that means is anybody, any three people on the board, can walk into an office; the precedent has been set to let the President go home,” he said, adding, “This is wrong.”

Download audio – Dr. Ralph Gonasalves speaks on CDB letter