Gail Alexan­der

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves, who was hit on the head with a stone by a pro­test­er out­side the Par­lia­ment build­ing yes­ter­day, is ex­pect­ed to be dis­charged from hos­pi­tal to­day.

His son Storm Gon­salves con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, af­ter Gon­salves was struck on the right side of his head—inch­es above his tem­ple– by a mis­sile at 5.15 pm.

Gon­salves, 74, had been en­ter­ing the Par­lia­ment com­pound to at­tend a de­bate on pro­posed COVID-19 vac­cine law when he was blocked by pro­test­ers.

Gon­salves’ of­fice stat­ed they (pro­test­ers) had re­spond­ed to a call from the leader of SVG’s op­po­si­tion.

The at­tack­er was among 200 pro­test­ers out­side the Par­lia­ment build­ing who were pick­et­ing against pro­posed changes to the is­land’s Pub­lic Health Act.

It was pro­posed that the word “vol­un­tary” would be re­moved from a sec­tion of St Vin­cent’s law that speaks to vac­ci­na­tion against an ill­ness that trig­gers the de­c­la­ra­tion of a pub­lic health emer­gency—such as COVID-19.

CNW re­port­ed that SVG’s gov­ern­ment was al­so mov­ing to make vac­cines manda­to­ry for par­tic­u­lar cat­e­gories of front­line pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees.

Gon­salves had made it clear the pro­pos­als didn’t in­volve le­gal penal­ty/pun­ish­ment for peo­ple who failed or re­fused to take the vac­cine or do a COVID test.

But SVG’s op­po­si­tion New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty demon­strat­ed against the pro­posed manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion thrust.

Yes­ter­day’s at­tack on Gon­salves was car­ried live on tele­vi­sion, with hor­ri­fied view­ers watch­ing as a com­men­ta­tor sud­den­ly de­clared loud­ly, “Some­body just bust the Prime Min­is­ter head with a stone!! Some­body just hit the Prime Min­is­ter in his head with a stone!!”

Gon­salves did not fall or col­lapse, but was im­me­di­ate­ly cov­ered by his big, burly body­guards, who were shout­ing the or­der to “Shield! Shield!” as they pro­tect­ed his body with theirs.

He was quick­ly hus­tled away to safe­ty and med­ical at­ten­tion at St Vin­cent’s Mil­ton Cato Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was met by his wife. Storm said his fa­ther didn’t lose con­scious­ness at any point.“But the mis­sile broke the skin and he lost a lot of blood,” he said.

Pho­tos on so­cial me­dia showed a tired look­ing Gon­salves at the hos­pi­tal with the right side of his white shirt front stained bright red with blood from the wound. He looked tired but was sit­ting up.

Storm added: “He is in good spir­its. He had ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to re­turn to the Par­lia­ment af­ter the hos­pi­tal, but the doc­tors ad­vised against it and he was be­ing kept overnight (Thurs­day night) for ob­ser­va­tion and to run some tests and he’s ex­pect­ed to be dis­charged (this morn­ing).

“This is very un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent caused by reck­less words and ac­tions by po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. This is op­po­si­tion-linked or­gan­i­sa­tion. It’s very dis­tress­ing.

“My fa­ther had been try­ing to leave the Par­lia­ment but they blocked his path and start­ed throw­ing mis­siles. One of the rights that MPs have is the ac­cess to Par­lia­ment, peo­ple in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines fought very hard for that right to have a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. And they tried to de­prive him from en­ter­ing the Par­lia­ment.”

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on in­to the at­tack. Up to 7.30 pm yes­ter­day no one was held.

Storm said the Gon­salves fam­i­ly is, “Ob­vi­ous­ly very con­cerned about the in­ci­dent but we’re hap­py he is okay. Hope­ful­ly, he’ll be dis­charged (to­day) and there won’t be any­thing fur­ther.”

A state­ment from Gon­salves’ of­fice stat­ed al­though Gon­salves had been phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed and wound­ed by the op­po­si­tion demon­stra­tors, he was re­cu­per­at­ing and re­cov­er­ing.

The state­ment added, “He has reaf­firmed that no law­less mob will pre­vent him from do­ing the peo­ple’s busi­ness in the seat of our democ­ra­cy. The Prime Min­is­ter has wel­comed all peace­ful demon­stra­tion as a fun­da­men­tal right en­shrined in our con­sti­tu­tion but has cau­tioned that le­git­i­mate peace­ful demon­stra­tion should in no way im­pede Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans’ right of en­trance and egress from the House of As­sem­bly.

“More­over, the use of vi­o­lence in pur­suit of po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es is en­tire­ly un­ac­cept­able. We ex­pect the per­pe­tra­tors of the ac­tu­al act of vi­o­lence will be brought to jus­tice. Such an act is to be con­demned. Equal­ly to be con­demned are the in­sti­ga­tors and back-room au­thors of this kind of vi­o­lence.”

Storm said his fa­ther may take the day off to­day, but added, “I’m sure he will have a mes­sage to give lat­er....one will be com­ing when he gets out and he will speak.’’

The Gon­salves fam­i­ly has many friends and col­leagues in T&T, who yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern about the in­ci­dent, some adding that it was un­called for.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne said, “We are mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments and have been in con­tact with SVG and Cari­com’s sec­re­tary gen­er­al. I have con­veyed the con­cern and prayers of the peo­ple of T&T.”

UNC deputy leader Jear­lean John said, “I would like on be­half of the UNC to of­fer our sin­cere best wish­es to our Cari­com col­league Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves and wish him a speedy re­cov­ery as we strong­ly con­demn this rep­re­hen­si­ble at­tack on him.”

MIS­IN­FOR­MA­TION BLAMED FOR UN­REST

Yes­ter­day’s ”vac­cine un­rest“ in St Vin­cent came nine months af­ter Gon­salves was re-elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter for a fifth term last No­vem­ber.

In the No­vem­ber elec­tions, Vin­cen­tians gave Gon­salves’ Uni­ty Labour Par­ty (ULP) nine of the 15 seats in the Par­lia­ment—an in­crease of three seats on the pre­vi­ous one-seat ma­jor­i­ty he’d en­joyed in the pre­vi­ous two gen­er­al elec­tions.

NDP leader Dr God­win Fri­day, 61, led that par­ty in­to a gen­er­al elec­tion for the first time.

It was al­so the first time that a po­lit­i­cal par­ty had won five con­sec­u­tive gen­er­al elec­tions there. In his vic­to­ry mes­sage then, Gon­salves thanked vot­ers for re­turn­ing the ULP to pow­er.

But fac­ing protests over the COVID vac­cine law pro­pos­als, last week Gon­salves cit­ed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and mis­in­for­ma­tion by some per­sons.

Ex­plain­ing the pro­posed Pub­lic Health rules, he had said, “The choice of work­ing or not work­ing in a par­tic­u­lar job which re­quires vac­ci­na­tion in the in­ter­est of pub­lic health will be that of the em­ploy­ee. In­di­vid­ual rights are al­ways re­quired in the ap­pro­pri­ate cir­cum­stances to be bal­anced by pub­lic in­ter­est con­sid­er­a­tions, in this case, the req­ui­sites of pub­lic health. The rel­e­vant rules un­der the Pub­lic Health Act will be made and pub­lished in due course in the of­fi­cial gazette.”