Gonsalves to publish book on 40 Caribbean political leaders

KINGSTOWN (CMC):

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalve said on Wednesday that while he has just published a book on regional integration, he also intends to write another one detailing his working relationship with former Cuban leaders, Fidel and Raul Castro, as well as the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking on his weekly radio programme on the state-owned NBC Radio, Gonsalves, one of the longest serving heads of government in the English-speaking Caribbean, said that the latest publication is in addition to other works he has done focusing on the socio-economic and political development of the region.

“And there is one, which I am hoping to have published before the general election is called, on Caribbean political leadership,” Gonsalves said.

Gonsalves, 79, is seeking an unprecedented sixth consecutive term in office, and is leading the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) into the general election, widely expected to take place before year end, preferably in November.

He told radio listeners that the book on Caribbean political leadership “is a big book with three parts, with the first part being a kind of autobiographical memoire on what made me the leader who I am”.

The leader of the ULP since 2001, said the book explores his ideas “and everything, and then I discuss different dimensions of leadership and I also discuss 40 political leaders who have served with me in CARICOM”.

He said he has discussed 10 leaders “who have gone to the great beyond”, one of them Patrick Manning (of Trinidad and Tobago).

He said there is a chapter on the late Barbados prime minister, Errol Barrow; Dr Cheddi Jagan of Guyana; Maurice Bishop, the first left wing head of government in Grenada; the Dominican Rosie Douglas, as well as Sir Robert Bradshaw of St Kitts and Nevis; the former St Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister, Milton Cato; as well as Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante of Jamaica and “the making of the modern Jamaica”.

Gonsalves said there is also a chapter on national liberation from the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture to Tim Hector of Antigua and Barbuda.

“I could not do everybody in any case, otherwise the thing is already voluminous … and once I have life, I will always put pen to paper,” he said, adding “so I had this one on integration in my system and this one on Caribbean political leadership in the system (and) I get them out.

“I want to write one, for instance, on my work with Fidel and Raoul and Chavez and Maduro. My observations of them, because I think the general public and students of politics are interested in all of these things that I am talking about.

“I am writing, I am putting out ideas,” he said, recalling that after the COVID-19 pandemic and the eruption of the La Soufriere Volcano, as well as the global crisis emanating from the Russia-Ukraine war, he wrote a publication “laying out a plan, a framework for St Vincent and the Grenadines” which is available on Amazon.