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Ralph Gonsalves: “My Spirit Is Not Defeated” | Life After 25 Years in Power · Corie Sheppard Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: I live in the bush.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_04: I can rest up in the must come.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: So sufficient to significant degree.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a country boy.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_04: I love the bush.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: I'm entitled.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_04: I've been entitled.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_04: 2002 on the basis of the 10th.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_04: My mother, Theresa Baldina Francis.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, was born on March 31st, 1919.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_04: In 2002.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I am a Trinidadian by the temperature.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_04: I've had friends.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: Lots of friends in the PNM.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: And also in the UNC.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_04: I walked with Batio Padlet for a short while when I came to office first.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: Then Manian.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: I work with Camela.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I work with Trowe.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: And then of course for a year or so with Kamla again.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um Kamala Mark 2.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes the fellas even after nine months.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: When they talk in the minister, the Prime Minister said what he brought Cartier on.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, it's DaVinci Wall Ballast.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: This is Jamaican Wall of the Ballast.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: I am not Da Vinci Wall of Ballots.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_04: I am the Wall of the Ballot.
• 2:05
  Corie: Hi, before we get started, we wanted to take a moment to ask you to support the channel for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing.
• 2:13
  Corie: Those are the three things that we realize you're not doing as much as you all say enjoying the conversation.
• 2:18
  Corie: So please, we appreciate your support.
• 2:20
  Corie: Let's get into today's conversation.
• 2:21
  Corie: Welcome to the Corey Shepherd Podcast.
• 2:23
  Corie: My name is Corey Shepard.
• 2:24
  Corie: Thank you for everybody who's been tuning in.
• 2:26
  Corie: Thank you for all the new listeners and viewers who are here.
• 2:29
  Corie: I have a gentleman with me here today that when I dream about doing interviews like these, I never thought I would be introducing this man as the former Prime Minister of St.
• 2:37
  Corie: Vincent and the Grande.
• 2:38
  Corie: Never thought it would happen.
• 2:39
  Corie: Let me see if I can get through the words.
• 2:41
  Corie: Former Prime Minister of St.
• 2:42
  Corie: Vincent and the Grandes, opposition leader, Dr.
• 2:45
  Corie: Ralph Gonzalez.
• 2:46
  Corie: Welcome to the show, so thank you very much.
• 2:48
  Corie: How are you going?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: I'm fine.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: I think you never saw the word former.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_04: You think I would be there?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_04: As the eternal prime minister.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, I understand.
• 2:58
  Corie: I went through this many times in my mind, and also I have to make sure I get the intro right.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_04: No, I'm happy to be here, Corey.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: And um I want to say thanks to the people of Trindal and Tobago who have um welcomed me well from the time I hit the airport, immigration officers, customs officers, ordinary people.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean, I'm here as a guest of the People's National Movement.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um to do something, to do something with them.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: With their own celebration, 70th anniversary, and at the same time to celebrate independence with them.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_04: Your 64th anniversary of independence.
• 3:43
  Corie: It's nice to have you here, yeah, Caribbean figure.
• 3:45
  Corie: You know, with the politics and the prime ministership is one thing, but we in an era now we are social media influencer, you know, people know you, the youths know you from social media, you know.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I'm gonna give them something to check.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm entitled, I've been advised to for citizenship of Trinidad and Tobago on the basis of descent.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: My mother, Theresa Balbina Francis, was born on March the 31st, 1919, in Trinidad and Tobago.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_04: So I am a Trinidadian by descent.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't applied for a passport because if I do that, it would put me under allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power state, and therefore will compromise my role as a parliamentarian.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_04: I wouldn't be eligible to contest election in St.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Grenadines.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_04: So but but um I could also apply that I wouldn't do this because this would involve something discretionary on the part of the authorities on the basis of my wife being a Trinidadian by birth.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, of course.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I have it on both sides.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: But listen, you you really can't stop me coming during that.
• 5:12
  Corie: No, that's exactly it.
• 5:13
  Corie: That's exactly it.
• 5:14
  Corie: Passports or no passports.
• 5:15
  Corie: I think you're always welcome, and I'm glad you're getting welcome that you you need this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: Very good welcome.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: Always.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: And before before I continue this conversation, I don't know.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_04: And depending on your answer to this question, we will we will be very friendly, okay, or we may have some disputation.
• 5:39
  Corie: Let me take a sip.
• 5:40
  Corie: Let me take this question.
• 5:41
  Corie: Which cup of the sip from me?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_04: Let me take a sip from us.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: There's only one pan side in Redan Tobago.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_04: That's pants from La Pantale.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: That is 100% true.
• 6:01
  Corie: Listen, I think people people are always happy to see it here.
• 6:04
  Corie: It's good for you to see.
• 6:05
  Corie: There are some people who are not happy to see it here, right?
• 6:07
  Corie: You're paying attention to that too?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: No, I'm not paying attention to that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: But um I don't know, Anil mightn't like the fact that I'm here.
• 6:21
  Corie: Well, uh, I'm sending greetings and happy independence to Anil.
• 6:25
  Corie: Only Anels.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_04: On behalf of all of us, and and and and and of course, I um send uh happy independence and prosperous periods ahead for the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago, and very much so, my dear sister Kamala.
• 6:48
  Corie: Yeah.
• 6:49
  Corie: Let's talk about that now because we had to talk about friendship, right?
• 6:51
  Corie: I come to learn about friendship from you, you know, because I saw you say at one point in time, it looked like well, it didn't have the best relationship, at least from a social media person looking on.
• 7:00
  Corie: It's not like it was you said that, and we saw it, we saw that um during the last election, we see people who are very familiar to Trinidad and Tobago in the process over by you.
• 7:10
  Corie: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Corie: And I heard some comments, but then about three, four weeks later, I say, Camilla is your sister, that's your friend.
• 7:16
  Corie: So you had to help understand.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: Well, let me just say, first of all, the whatever was said in during the election period by operatives out of Trudad and Tobago, and some came to St.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Grenadines.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: My estimation, they had absolutely nothing to do in any significant or marginal way with our with our defeat at the polls.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: I I I I wouldn't attribute any of that to them.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: They might think that their role was more than it it was.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: Remember this, you know, the the the ancient civilization, the Chinese, 6,000 years old, they they have this saying that success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: I suppose.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_04: So that everybody, everybody claims when they participate, that they're the reason.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, of course.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's human nature.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: Kamala and I work very well in Kamala Mark I.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: And the year when in her second term, we have Trindad and the relations between Trindad and Tobago and St.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and Gandhi's at a governmental level continued as per normal.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, the first meeting of CARICOM in the new term.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: In her new term took place in Jamaica in in Montego Bay.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: My brethren Sean Sovers.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_04: He he attended, you might you probably saw a photograph with he and I hugging up because I went, I went into the room, the ante-room, before we gathered.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_04: And the only person um Sean was there early.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: And he and I sit down and we talk, and you know, he say, you know, I since I'm a boy in primary school, I say I learned that the prime minister hasn't been sending very indeed his Ralph Gonzalez and now here, my first CARICOM meeting, and you're here and you welcome me and so on.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: And um, I saw him in July.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry, in St.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: Lucian Castries.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: With the where he attended the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I was on the margins doing some other things.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we meet, we talk.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we hail up one another.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: So I don't I I quite like him actually.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: The in the in the in in the case of a number of people don't know.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_04: I'll tell you something, Corey.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: I took the issue of reparations, reparatory justice for native genocide and and the enslavement of African bodies to CIRACOM in 2013.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_04: And between 2013 and 2014, the six-month period when Kamala was chair of CIRACOM.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: I came to Port of Spain.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: I said, My dear sister, I'm bringing this thing.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: I prepared all the documents in my hand.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: She said, I support you 100% with this.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, the whole of CARICOM supported.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: But she could have stalled it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, as illegal.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_04: As as as the the the chair said, nah, we are ready to put that on the agenda.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I could have then raised it on the floor.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: It could have had some contentiousness, divisiveness.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: But this is a matter which you want to go forward with unanimity from the beginning.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: And she was very supportive.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: The irony was not lost on me.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: That here is it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Ralph.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: My four parents from Madeira.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_04: We were taking the St.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Genadines in November 1945 as indentured servants.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: When they were looking for workers after the abolition of slavery in 1838, and Kamla, a descendant of the Indian indentured laborers.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_04: Fate, history, and circumstance brought us together to have this matter focused on the agenda.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, all of CARICOM supports.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: And it isn't that I was the only person who was supporting reparations.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody is supporting it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: But I the one who thought that these circumstances were propitious to take it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: At that time.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: And because I've done a lot of research on the subject, I it was easy for me to don't worry the public servants about this thing.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: Because I on this I knew more than perhaps most of the public servants.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I didn't pass it out to them to do anything.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_04: Sure, do it yourself.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: I did it in conjunction with Hillary Beckles, Professor Beckles, who's who is vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies and an esteemed historian.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: And we worked very well on several things.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: She came and she visited St.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and she and I got along splendidly.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, the the fallout from the Clico Baiko debut.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: And other policyholders elsewhere.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: Suffering.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: Suffering.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: So there was a negotiated sum.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: So that we can help with the policy holders in the in the OECS countries.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_04: And she actually made her government made a payment of that agreed sum.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: And she left office.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_04: The balance has not yet been paid.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_04: Don't know if it is going to be paid.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: So we had some we had some issues, for instance, with Cal.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_04: Only that was in the air.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: They were subsidizing aviation fuel for Cal.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_04: I said, but you can't subsidize aviation fuel.
• 14:15
  Corie: Yeah, we can have a competitive.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_04: This is contrary to the multilateral air services agreement.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: This is an impermissible subsidy.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: We discussed it, so I got a legal opinion.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I sent it to her.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: I said, this is the legal opinion on which I'm acting.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because I was the chair of the shareholders of Liatt.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: And she said, okay, okay.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: And they stopped doing the subsidy.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_04: They provided help to Carl.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they're the shareholders for Carl.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: But this impermissible subsidy is cut off.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: So there are several things.
• 14:58
  Corie: Yeah, you are a good working relationship.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: We have a good relations, of course.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: There was no relationship with any prime minister in Trindad and Tobago during my time.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like the hand in glove with Comrade Ralph and Patrick.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_04: We were tight from university days.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_04: We played pan in the same pan side at the university.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: Might surprise you as a tenor pan player.
• 15:24
  Corie: Yeah, ma'am.
• 15:25
  Corie: We need evidence here, no.
• 15:26
  Corie: It might have a pan somewhere, you know.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure if you need evidence.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um so we we we worked well together.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um the in the case of Patrick, of course, we're so close.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: We are so close.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_04: There's a there's a village in my constituency where we did a lot of work together called Man in Village.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: After Patrick.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: So and in the second term with Kamala, I consider that some of her rhetoric in relation to CARCOM is unnecessarily divisive.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't agree with her that the CARICOM, that the Caribbean is not a zone of peace.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think there's a misconception.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: But those disagreements which I have with her are respectful.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: In other words, you ain't going to find me verbally abusing Kamala.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: I would always speak about her in very respectful terms.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: There's a woman who came from very humble beginnings, and by dint of discipline and hard work, God given intelligence, she has worked her way through a male-dominated political system.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_04: And triumph is it's it's a remarkable story.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, difficult to do.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's a remarkable story, you know.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I I work I worked with Baz Jo Pande for a short while when I came to office first.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: Then Manning.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: Manion, I work with Kamla, and I work with Keith Rowley, and then of course, for a year or so with Kamala again, um Kamla, Kamla Mark too.
• 17:23
  Corie: Right.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so and and throughout it all, I've made sure that despite the fact that the Labour Party in St.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Grandeans historically has links with the PNM.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_04: The founding father of the Labour Party, Robert Milton Kato of Blessed Memory, or first Prime Minister, led our country to independence in 1979.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_04: In the federal days, he was one of the representatives of St.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent Grandians in the federal government.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: And he was always in touch with the people's national movement.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_04: They were together in the West Indies Federal Labour Party.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: He would have been there as leader of the Labour Party.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: The iconic Dr.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_04: Eric Williams, leader the PM and head of the government in Trinidad and Tobago.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a connection.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_04: Now it goes up and down.
• 18:33
  Corie: Sure.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's an unevenness.
• 18:35
  Corie: Just like a Wi-Fi connection, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, like some marriages too.
• 18:42
  Corie: Yeah.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_04: So they so the it's life and living and of course, of course, that's how it goes.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_04: And so there's always been this, but I've had friends, lots of friends in the PNM and also in the UNC.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'll tell you this.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: The I headed a movement called the Movement for National Unity, which merged into the St.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and Granny Labour Party to become the Unity Labour Party.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: The first convention in 1984 of the Movement for National Unity, the man who spoke as the guest speaker was Bastio.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: As a Labour man himself.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_04: A Labour man.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: I know Rafiq and I know fellows from the ULF.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: Gotcha.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Gotcha.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_04: Gotcha.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_04: So you know, people who don't know the history, and some who come along lately, either inadvertently, opportunistically, or even genuinely.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_04: And don't know the history and the nature of the relations, may come to conclusions which would lead them to perversities.
• 20:06
  Corie: I understand.
• 20:08
  Corie: I want to get back to that history, yeah.
• 20:10
  Corie: Yeah.
• 20:10
  Corie: But I wonder if how you felt at the time because you're running for this election, you're an experienced man in this.
• 20:15
  Corie: You see, you see some of these things coming.
• 20:16
  Corie: Sometimes you all know before we know.
• 20:18
  Corie: You're surprised that the the the that we have operatives from here, as you say.
• 20:23
  Corie: You mentioned Orlando Octave, Macamillion, Swapy, people on the ground campaigning and so on.
• 20:28
  Corie: You're surprised at it, or you what's your feeling?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: No, I I saw that effort as a coordinated effort by forces external to the Caribbean.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: Who wanted to get rid of Ralph.
• 20:45
  Corie: Okay, okay.
• 20:49
  Corie: So so so they they they and I took that in my stride.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_04: But I don't think any of that.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you're not giving that a lot of credence to remove.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_04: What what what what helped the opposition a lot in terms of external sources?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of money to just put that helps by by forces wanted citizenship by investment to buy passports.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 21:23
  Corie: Okay.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: Buy citizenship, as you know, of the five of the six OECS countries, independent countries, with the only one under my leadership.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_04: Never ever supported citizenship by investment.
• 21:39
  Corie: If you're a business organization or brand looking to reach an engaged and growing audience, the Corey Shepherd Podcast offers opportunities to sponsor, partner, and advertise.
• 21:49
  Corie: You could check out the email address in our YouTube description or via the link in our bio on Instagram.
• 21:56
  Corie: We need the money.
• 21:58
  Corie: Like uh Max and House, you remember that?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: And that's so, but these people want our passport.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_04: Since 2001, they have been putting money in.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: And this last time, they put money in a real abundance.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_04: They put enough.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_04: And others too for different reasons.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: With you, with you.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I would have thought that that kind of influx of money, which to a considerable degree is the oxygen of electoral politics.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm talking practically.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_04: So those are but even even the the question is that well, they gave money every election cycle.
• 22:52
  Corie: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: Why is the difference this time?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_04: So some of what we did or did not do would have contributed to our own defeat.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: Because if I defeated you all the time before and I lost this time to you, um Yeah, look inward a little bit of support.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_04: I to also look inward.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_04: You know, um normal wear and tear in a government, um some difficult decisions were taken over certain periods.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, even though even though we handled the COVID pandemic quite well, volcanic eruption, hurricane burial.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, there's a there's a peculiar thing about us Cory as human beings.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: We have satisfactions and we have dissatisfactions.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: When we have our satisfactions, we don't tend to remember them.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_04: What exercises our minds is our dissatisfaction.
• 24:06
  Corie: Yeah, particularly in this era of social media, huh?
• 24:09
  Corie: You you you see what I mean?
• 24:11
  Corie: 100%.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_04: So philosophers and theologians.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'm going to reference a theologian, Saint Augustine, who wrote in The City of God, wrote The City of God in the fourth century A.D.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_04: And a thousand years later, Machiavelli wrote The Prince.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: And essentially, one of the premises from each of them, the moved, is that human beings, by and large, live in a permanent condition of dissatisfaction.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_04: And a large number of us can be fickle, have it for gain, in quest of status, meaning social estimation of honor.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: And you have all the satisfactions under your belt.
• 25:02
  Corie: Right.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: But the focus is here.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: Is on the dissatisfactions.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_04: And those who focus on the dissatisfactions, you know, they will go on Sundays or Saturdays, whatever is their Sabbath day.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: And they'd be singing in church every morning when they go to church.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: Count your blessings, name them one by one.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: You know.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_04: But when they voted, they may not necessarily remember the blessings.
• 25:35
  Corie: They don't vote on the Sabbath day.
• 25:38
  Corie: So the complicated, complicated business.
• 25:43
  Corie: When I talked to Imagine Sobers, I saw it the same way in the beginning where I never envisioned.
• 25:48
  Corie: You know, you think that's your prime minister forever.
• 25:50
  Corie: You you saw it that way, or you felt like there's a timeline for.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_04: I know there's a timeline.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_04: I have um let me tell you how how I respect the electorate.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: It used to drive Eloise.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: Well, not insane, but she said this is the last time I'm doing this.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_04: The evening before the election, I there would be nothing in the Prime Minister's residence which belongs to me.
• 26:35
  Corie: Is this one or all of them?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_04: All of them.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_04: I live in the bush like a raster man but with internet.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_04: You must come.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_04: Really, really good looking.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_04: I alone up there.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know, self-sufficient to a significant degree.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a country boy.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: All right, all right.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I grew up on a farm.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I I love the bush.
• 27:03
  Corie: Yeah.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: Other fellas go to the seaside, I love the sea too.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the bush is home.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_04: The bush is home.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_04: I the last thing I would take out when I leave the evening before the election, and I go to my constituency, which is in the northeast.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_04: My toothbrush.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_04: I don't even leave a toothbrush.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_04: The I listen to the election results.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_04: I win.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_04: I move a few items back to go and be sworn in the next day.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_04: Or in the case of the last time, I just stay.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_04: Keep your stuff home.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_04: I just stay home.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_04: And on this occasion, when we lost, the very night, I said, the people of St.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Grenadines have decided to afford me a different role.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I accept that role.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: And I will perform it with love, in dignity, and to the best of my ability.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_04: People are surprised.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_04: But I saw it, I was surprised.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_04: You're almost 25 years as prime minister to leave there and to become leader of the opposition and you have a lopsided majority on the other side.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, very lonely opposition.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: So they um, yeah, but one more than 14, you know.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: You don't count, you don't count numbers, you count quality.
• 28:57
  Corie: All right.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_04: So the the the the the fact that I'm defeated electorally, my brain is not defeated.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_04: My spirit is not defeated.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_04: I have an unconquerable soul.
• 29:09
  Corie: I want to ask you about that spirit, right?
• 29:11
  Corie: Because when you're gonna make speeches like those and you're gonna see the way you do cryful something, so you're not emotional when you do it, because you never look like I would have been tears.
• 29:19
  Corie: What's your emotion when you find out this is it?
• 29:21
  Corie: I I accept that as a fact.
• 29:24
  Corie: Any moment.
• 29:25
  Corie: At that moment and subsequent.
• 29:27
  Corie: I accept that as a fact.
• 29:28
  Corie: How you felt about the fact that the country seems to be going in a different direction, but they still chose you.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, in my constituency, I talk very little politics in my constituency.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: My constituency raised, my constituents raise politics with me.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: I'm an uncle.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, I'm a counselor, I'm an advisor.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: I go in the my constituency, I play dominoes.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um I eat with people.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes I'm a boy.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_04: That's how I grow up.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: Right now, I would I would be I would be surprised that today, Sunday, that somebody in the in the constituency called Eloise and say, How many of you home?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: I call them yesterday.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um don't cook, I will bring in food for you.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I hear Ralph in there.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, don't worry.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I come by your house, Corey.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_04: I say, how's your brother in New York?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: How is he doing?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: What about your auntie in Toronto who had a problem with her with the with her varicose veins?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: How with you?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_04: How with you?
• 30:58
  Corie: They know you.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_04: Where I live, people come to me, streams of people come all the time.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody has my telephone number.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: As Prime Minister, the same thing.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: So I I don't and and the opposition, I mean the other party in St.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent, they know that.
• 31:24
  Corie: I like what you call them the opposition still, you know.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean it's well, sometimes the fellas, even after nine months, when they talk in the meeting, the prime minister said, I said, I go accept it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: So um and so I have a I have a different view about service and I always know that the the the um the vicissitudes of electoral politics.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_04: You don't always win.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_04: There are a lot of great leaders who would lose for this or that reason.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_04: Winston Churchill won the war as a wartime leader in the election in 1945.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: He went to the polls and he lost the government.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_04: This is the man who spearheaded the and and and when they when they when they look at prime ministers, when people study them, they say the two greatest prime ministers in Britain.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_04: They have a debate all the time, they the historians.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_04: Is it Winston Churchill or is it William E.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_04: Gladstone?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the historians come down on the side of uh by far, on the side of Churchill, save the country from Nazism and fascism.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: They say, thank you, Winston.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_04: Or to see this peacetime, we think another man is going to be in a better position to lead us in peacetime.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's not um it's is it's not an unusual thing.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_04: In Trendad, at one occasion, and you know it very well, there was a movement on the AR.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_04: They swept away the PNM.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, your partner was in the same position.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_04: Well, they they they it was only here they had and Murel.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_04: He became leader of the opposition and accidental leader of the opposition and leader the PNM.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: He became a very distinguished prime minister.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: And that was one five years later, they swept it, they swept the PNM back into power.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_04: So you you you you have these ups and downs, the electoral cycles, and they and the the the analysts would look this, that, and the other.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes there's a consensus as to why people won, one or people lost.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: Oh well.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: But sometimes it takes a little while to understand all the reasons.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_04: There was once an American journalist asked a French intellectual in in in um in 1990.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_04: 200 years after the French Revolution.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: And the journalist said, Well, could you please tell us what the what you see as the impact of the French Revolution?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: And the French intellectual responded, um, it's too early to say.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, Corey, it's in some ways a simple business, in other ways complicated.
• 35:28
  Corie: Yeah, and I suppose you have the experience, you've been through both sides of the I've I've I've been through it.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: I I've been around so long I tell people that I'm not mentioned in the in the um in the Hebrew text.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_04: But but Isaac Son of Abraham, he and I used to pitch my books.
• 35:50
  Corie: But I just like telling these fellows.
• 35:52
  Corie: The folks behind the camera, I didn't tell you this is the earliest interview we ever do, so I say I say only gonna bring this man here this about because if I were you, I'd be waking up about 11 on a daily basis.
• 36:01
  Corie: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 36:02
  Corie: Not you.
• 36:03
  Corie: Let me tell you this.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: Every day I get up in the arc between 4 and 4:30.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_04: As prime minister and opposition leader?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_04: Every day.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_04: When I leave in bed, when Eloise is stirred, she would say, All right, I know you're going to milk a cattle.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_04: Metaphorically.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_04: When I was a boy, I went to secondary school in Kingston, 18 miles from the city.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's where I lived in the Northeast.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_04: My chore as a 12, 13, 14-year-old boy, was to go to the lands 15-20 minutes by donkey.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_04: My mode of transport, my donkey named George.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I would milk the cattle and milk the cow.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Bring home fresh milk.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't have pipe-borne water in the home until 1960, or electricity.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: Till I was 14 years old.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_04: Bat in the river.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: Clean water in the river, no pollution in those days.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_04: And get ready to take the first bus, first and only bus, which is leaving my village, to go to school in the arc between half past six and quarter to seven.
• 37:39
  Corie: Yeah, so you had to be ready, you can't miss the bus.
• 37:40
  Corie: So I can't miss it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_04: When I come back home on evenings, when I get home by five o'clock, I have to go to the lands to cut feeding for my donkey, which I kept it at home in the backyard, and to change my goods.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: See, see.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_04: So I come home, go to the river and bed, do homework, go to bed and get up every day.
• 38:07
  Corie: Yeah, that's instilled you can't change that now.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_04: I I am on mornings when I get up, I I I um I've been drinking coffee since I'm 14.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I have my black coffee.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: I go on my desktop and I start to read all major newspapers in the Caribbean and and across the English-speaking world.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_04: So by six o'clock, six fifteen, I know it's happening in the world from what the commentators are saying.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: I read every morning The Guardian Online, the Trindad Guardian, and Trindad Express.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_04: I see, I see.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I I go to the island.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: The Gleener, the Observer, go to others.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um, that's that's that's so I I I have I'm very disciplined.
• 39:06
  Corie: Oh, which are the areas culinary?
• 39:07
  Corie: Isn't it the area?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_04: Is my home village.
• 39:09
  Corie: That's what you as well.
• 39:10
  Corie: So depends.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_04: There is a there is a there is a seaside village.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: But my my father left primary school when he was 11 years old to go and work on an estate, jogging our route.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_04: My mother finished the standard six, the old standard six in the primary school.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: And uh highly intelligent, both of them, and very disciplined and everything.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_04: And I had a fantastic father.
• 39:40
  Corie: But um always here reference them as parents and that upbringing.
• 39:44
  Corie: And I guess well, the discipline of the farm translated into school, translates into the rest of life.
• 39:49
  Corie: Farm shop.
• 39:50
  Corie: Of course, of course.
• 39:52
  Corie: So undergrad was econ?
• 39:54
  Corie: I did econ with a concentration in government.
• 39:58
  Corie: So then why are you concentrating government?
• 40:00
  Corie: You see in this as something that you want to do as early as well?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: Well, when I when I when I did my first year in the economics degree, we all did the courses which I did co were economics for the whole year.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: Introduction to government, introduction to politics, sociology, maths, for social scientists, statistics and scientific method.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_04: And in the year of reading and studying, I said, well, this is where I want my focus to go.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that I did a master's at Mona.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I did as a student, I was a pretty good student.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: I was I was um student of the year at Mona in 1968, 69, um, that academic year.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_04: They chose university, chose the person, both an academic and non-academic work.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I was very active.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_04: I played cricket, I played a steel band, I did a lot of um work in the communities, such and so forth.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: So I've always been like that since I'm a youth.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_04: And um and and then I did a postgraduate degree there.
• 41:28
  Corie: The master's was in government at this time.
• 41:30
  Corie: Yeah.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_04: And then I I did a I did a PhD in political economy at the University of Manchester.
• 41:35
  Corie: Right.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um In fact, while I was prime minister, I was the only head of government outside of Africa who attended an African university.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_04: I took a year off from Manchester and went to Macareri University in Uganda.
• 41:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 41:53
  Corie: I was reading that your thesis at the PhD level was about labor's role in politics in Uganda.
• 41:59
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:00
  Corie: Why?
• 42:01
  Corie: That's something like who are you interested in this?
• 42:06
  Corie: Well, because the PhD was in Manchester, yes, it was in Manchester.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_04: To understand an economy, you have to understand the role of labor in the economy and also in the political economy.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: And the political economy essentially is a study of economics and what's behind the economics, for instance.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_04: An economic economic simplicity would would would tell you the aggregate of the economy is um wages and salaries, profits, rents, money, taxation.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, tell me if you can understand them unless you understand the following.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: Behind wages and salaries are real flesh and blood workers.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_04: Behind profits are capitalists, entrepreneurs, call them what you will.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_04: Behind rents are landlords and tenants.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: Behind taxes are the people and the state, in our case, democratically elected.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_04: So you have to understand real flesh and blood people in their role in the society, in the economy.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_04: They are not just the economics, is not just a disembodied, disembodied abstraction.
• 43:50
  Corie: But you see, you saying that because you you you're taking that from it.
• 43:52
  Corie: Because when they go Econ 101, they teach you land, labor, capital, and enterprise.
• 43:56
  Corie: Remember them classes back in the day?
• 43:58
  Corie: And you're right, I suppose.
• 44:00
  Corie: That be behind land capital and enterprise, still people.
• 44:03
  Corie: Absolutely.
• 44:04
  Corie: But not everybody sees it or takes that from their listeners.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_04: You have to.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_04: You have to.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: Because we categories have been developed which have a certain sacrosance.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_04: But even I always go and interrogate those categories.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: Gross domestic product.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_04: You know?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_04: Dead to GDP.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: These are rough measures.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_04: And some of those measures are at the best guesstimates.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_04: And men, men and women make decisions on the movement of a quarter percentage point, a one percentage point, etc.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I bear all that in mind.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not unscientific, but I also had to look at real flesh and blood people.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_04: So I I come to that particular study.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: And then I I did I did law.
• 45:07
  Corie: Well, I want to go back to the PhD.
• 45:09
  Corie: So you decided to do that as a thesis and you moved to Uganda at the time to do the study?
• 45:13
  Corie: I I did the research work.
• 45:15
  Corie: How long were you there for?
• 45:16
  Corie: A year.
• 45:17
  Corie: What's your experience like this?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uganda is a beautiful place.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was I lived in Uganda under a military dictatorship.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_04: Idi Amindada.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_04: General Idi Amin Dada.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was there when the Asians were expelled.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I went through East Africa too, I know Kenya.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: I played cricket in the East and Central African Championships in Daras Alam.
• 45:50
  Corie: So you was good then.
• 45:51
  Corie: You could have played a little cricket?
• 45:56
  Corie: I was picturing a little win ball in the road, and then you could have played it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: I had I had um more enthusiasm than skill in that regard.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_04: In the right room again.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_04: So I uh I I wouldn't want to but but but I wouldn't embarrass myself totally.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_04: All right, all right.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_04: But um of course, the matter in which I'm I'm um I'm highly skilled, and I'm arguably the best domino player in the world.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_04: This self-pro people tell you this, or I'm I'm um, I say arguably.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_04: I put the adverb there just in case a person may doubt it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: All right, having haven't tell you about the extent of my skills in cricket, but I think it'd be fair to say that they balance it off and tell you what I'm about in dominoes.
• 46:44
  Corie: Fair, fair, fair.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: So what the like tell me the best dominoes player, domino players in Jamaica, for instance, or in Portland.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I went to Portland and I went to a tavern, a rum shop, and uh where they say the domino, the best domino players reside.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_04: So I went in the tavern.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: I said, I am the best domino player in the world.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_04: I want the weakest man inside of here.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_04: You give me that, and the two strongest men, and I sat about with the weakest man and beat them.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_04: Weakest man's your partner, the weak the weakest man is my partner.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_04: Patoso is not a good domino player.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_04: But I tell you this, but I tell you this he and I beat Owen at Jack Deo at the state house in that, you know, and both of them talk about the complete domino.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_04: But he will try to rewrite this thing he goes back down, just to quarrel some make a mistake, and so on and so on and so on.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: The the the no Patrick and I beat them at the state house in Ghana.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_04: She knows Jack B.
• 48:07
  Corie: Yeah, no record of that, them fellas they record that.
• 48:09
  Corie: It's nice place folklore now.
• 48:10
  Corie: Folklore.
• 48:12
  Corie: So you're living in in Uganda uh under Idi Amin and so on.
• 48:16
  Corie: It'll be a different world.
• 48:18
  Corie: You know the thing about a dictatorship is it's uncertainty, lack of predictability.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_04: You go to bed one night under one law, and you wake up the next morning, there's a decree.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: And that's that.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_04: It ain't going to no parliament.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_04: One man.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: One man or a group of people put this thing before one man and they sign it.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: You could be a lockup or something which might name know the law change.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no the law change.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes with ridiculous things.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_04: So, so, so Cory, it's a um it it that's the thing.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: If they because most people don't, on a daily basis, they got all their problems, don't pay too much attention to politics.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: They get up a single uh parent, the mother tried to fix the birth for she hustles, she going after work, she tried to do something.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um coming home to make sure her children they they they don't get bad company and going to the you know, some some some terrible people who want to be misreadable.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: So, but they want to know that by the I have a say somewhere and I could talk without a government armed with powers and lock you up when they want to lock you up.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_04: Let you go when they want to let you go.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_04: As a normal part of society's functioning.
• 50:09
  Corie: You're still talking about Ugandas.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm talking, I'm I'm I'm talking about Uganda.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know what happened anywhere else.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_04: I talk about Uganda.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, I talk about Uganda under Eidi Amin.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_04: All right, on it, yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that that's I just want to check here.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, good.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um any any any any comparisons which anybody want to make, you know, I'm not making no sometimes drift off with, you know, so I just want to make sure, you know.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's that's living.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_04: But as a young man, I went parties, went to a lot of fet.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_04: I I love it.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_04: So you live.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_04: I live, I live, but but you you there's always this fair and the occasions the military will meet you and question you about this or that and so on and so forth.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: And at those times you are a little apprehensive.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_04: Thank God there was no situation where I was ever detained or anything like that.
• 51:12
  Corie: I wondered when you when I saw the title of the thesis, if there's a welcome thing in a dictatorship, as you say, where you come into study now the role of labor in politics, because the politics you're talking about is under under Well, I I the period of my study though I had a uh a post script ended when Amen took office.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_04: I see, I see, I see.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: No more studying, no politics on labor.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_04: But and and my my research was approved by the the president's office too.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_04: University and the president's office.
• 51:51
  Corie: I see.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I had a CAD from the an ID card issued by the president's office.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Which I walked with me all the time.
• 51:58
  Corie: Yeah, in case the military stops, so you're clear about it.
• 52:01
  Corie: I understand.
• 52:02
  Corie: I understand.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_04: I am yeah, I had one or two little close run-ins on this or that.
• 52:06
  Corie: But you say flawless.
• 52:07
  Corie: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Corie: My maths are not always that great, right?
• 52:10
  Corie: I have it when I calculated that at this time it's 26 years old or something like that.
• 52:14
  Corie: 20 2076.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I I got I I I um I got my PhD in June 20, June 1974, which is when I was 27 years old.
• 52:27
  Corie: 27 years old.
• 52:28
  Corie: You enjoy your 20s.
• 52:29
  Corie: This song like a rough 20s, you know.
• 52:31
  Corie: You went from the farm straight into three degrees.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_04: I I I um I I um I enjoyed myself.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_04: I did a lot of fun things.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_04: But I organized my time properly.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and the organized my time properly.
• 52:47
  Corie: If you want to support the show and ensure that we're getting the best guests here telling the best stories and we're getting a little bit of back and all out of all of them, you could support for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing on YouTube.
• 52:57
  Corie: But you could also join our Patreon and just file us to ensure that we could continue to get stories that inspire, educate, empower, inform, and all the other in things that these people behind the scenes tell me to say.
• 53:08
  Corie: So go and do it now, and then we could jump back into the episode.
• 53:13
  Corie: Bang.
• 53:14
  Corie: So you said again, your poline partner, you had friends in politics for a long time and so on, and some dominoes games that may or may not have happened.
• 53:23
  Corie: I want to ask you about that relationship with yourself and Patrick Manning.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_04: Well, first of all, let me tell you this.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_04: 1969 was a good year.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_04: There are three university graduates from Mona in 1969.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_04: Patrick Manning, Bruce Golden, and Ralph Gonzalez.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_04: That's the only class that ever produced three prime ministers.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: Patrick in geology and Bruce and Iconomics in social sciences.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_04: I got to know Patos.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_04: I was in Taylor Hall and he was in Irving Hall.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_04: And the university steel ban was basically an Irving Hall steel ban.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_04: From my freshman week, I played a pan for an event.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_04: I was fortunate that the pan that they had was a pan which was designed by invaders but perfected by desperados.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_04: That 28th note.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: In the middle of the the the the the pan was there, the a big F sharp.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_04: Make it easy.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_04: Make the runs in G, you know, easy on the hand.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_04: Nice.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_04: So they asked me to come and play.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_04: At that time, Patrick was in the engine room beating the triangle, but he was practicing also on the tenor pan.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_04: So I played alongside a man from Trinidad who played the spider web pan.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I played for a short while there, and then another group of young Jamaicans asked me to get involved with them, which I did.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_04: And Patos took over my pan.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_04: In 1968, when I was president of the students as elected, I led the largest protest and told thousands and thousands of people.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_04: When Walter Rodney was banned from returning to Jamaica from a black writers' conference in Montreal, Canada, on the 15th of October 1968.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_04: 1968 was in a sense a precursor to the 1970 event in February here in Trinidad.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: Patos and other students joined us to go downtown, walk downtown.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_04: We were beaten by the police and military and tear gas.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: Patos would tell you that is the first and only time he was ever tear gas.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_04: That wasn't the last time I was tear gas.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: I was tear gas a couple of times after that.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: And he tell me, boy, he said, he said, you the man, you the man who made me get licks and tear gas, you know, comrade, you the man.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_04: But so we develop a we have a friendship going.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_04: He came to office, of course, before me.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_04: And we worked very, very well together when he was prime minister.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_04: He helped in so many ways with St.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and Grenadines.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, there was more money then in Trinidad and Tobago.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_04: Than you have.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: The petrochemical industry was in a stronger place.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_04: He visited St.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_04: I visited here.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_04: I had an event in my home at the Prime Minister's residence.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_04: I brought all his family from Chateaubeley to a luncheon.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_04: He came, we celebrated.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, every day we used to talk.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_04: Every morning, Patrick and I used to talk.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: As partners, not as long as partners.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_04: He would call me, I'll call him, he got up early.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, I was.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_04: When when he called the election, um the snap election.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_04: In 2010.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_04: When I heard the announcement, I called him.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Brethren, what do you do?
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_04: What you I said, why didn't talk to me about this thing, man?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_04: He said, no, no, no, no, no.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna be alright and so on.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_04: He said, I ain't I ain't talking to you about it because you're gonna dissuade me.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_04: I say, you're you're right, I was going to dissuade you.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I prepare this wicket well.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: He said, no, man, I think I alright, and so on and so on.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, he misread it.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_04: Or some pole gave him the wrong direction.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_04: But instinctively I felt.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_04: As I say, man in village.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_04: If you go in St.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent, there's an area upstairs by the departure lounge.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_04: There are photographs of three men.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_04: Fidel, Patos, and Chavez.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_04: Who helped me very much with the airport.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_04: They you will see also a plaque involving with the Republic of China, Taiwan, which they also helped.
• 59:05
  Corie: Yes, yes, yes.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_04: There was a photograph downstairs, a painting downstairs of me.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_04: Because I led the building of the airport.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_04: When the new government came to power, they they took the first thing they did, they took it down.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_04: But you can you can take long my photographs, you can take long the painting.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_04: You can't erase the fact that I bill it.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_04: When nobody else could have billed.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_04: We had, remember, I give you this.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_04: Many stories, but I give you this one.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_04: We in St.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_04: Lucia at a car com meeting.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_04: In the lobby.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the before the in front of, outside of where the meeting, we're having coffee.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_04: He hit me on my my back.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_04: Man, nearly make me spill my coffee.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_04: He said, How is the man who master the 27?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_04: No ten of pan.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_04: So I say 28.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_04: He said, nah, it's 27.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like two school boys arguing it's 27, 28.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I'm telling you, Patos.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_04: I give him the history of the pan.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_04: I say it's 28 note.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: He said, nah, 27.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_04: Let me make a bet.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_04: I say, okay, tell me where's the bet.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_04: He said, if it's 27 note, one of them uninhabited islands in the Grenadines, you gotta give it to Trinidad and Tobago.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_04: I say, fine.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_04: I say, and if it's 28, you give me an oil field.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_04: He said, he said better.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_04: So the same day that Patrick came back to Trinidad.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_04: And he went to Whitehall.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_04: I said, when he got, you know, called Rudolph.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_04: Rudolph was the captain of the spawn.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_04: Called Rudolph.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Rudolph went down.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_04: Because Patos has a lot of things, but I mean he had to resolve this bet with the commander.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_04: He called me.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_04: He said, okay, okay, okay, you win the bet.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_04: You win the bet, you win the bet.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's 28th note.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_04: I say, well, there are consequences to winning this bet.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_04: What about my own field?
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_04: You laugh uproariously.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_04: He said, that is an unenforceable bet in law.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_04: But he helped me with the airport.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_04: Nice, nice, nice, nice.
• 1:01:52
  Corie: Let's see any of you on friendship.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_04: And I was passing through Trinidad when I was told by Joan, who used to be at the VIP lounge.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_04: That sent us subsequently to the mission in Washington.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_04: Good public servant.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_04: I was going somewhere else.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_04: I changed my plans completely.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_04: I went to Southern.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_04: Where he was.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: I saw him two days before his death.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_04: The presence of his two or three days.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_04: And his doctors told me he said you gotta come more often because change we talk so many things.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_04: We talk things which I can't talk about.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_04: And it was very sad when he died.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, I paid tribute to him.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: I was his lord that asked me to come and do something.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_04: And then when his biography, when his biography was written by Brigitte Breton, Professor Emerita, I did the forward, and when it was launched, um, I was asked to make a presentation.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_04: So he and I were very close.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_04: And he and Jack Deo and Owenata and I, we did a lot of things together.
• 1:03:27
  Corie: Including the domino game.
• 1:03:28
  Corie: Including the domino.
• 1:03:29
  Corie: We need evidence.
• 1:03:30
  Corie: So that I mean, when when I looked at that and I see 26, 27 years old, I say this, this, this, that is not the norm, right?
• 1:03:37
  Corie: People don't don't do PhDs at 27 years old, you're definitely an outlier.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, I I I what I what I also did when I was doing my my PhD, I did the academic part of law.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't, I didn't I also from that time.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I did the academic part of law, and then when I finished my PhD, I I did the professional part in England.
• 1:04:00
  Corie: Right, sometime after though.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I um I so when I left when I I came back in the region in 1974, did uh taught at University of the West Indies at Mona.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_04: Then they transferred me to Barbados.
• 1:04:21
  Corie: You teaching political science at all time?
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_04: Teaching different courses.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_04: Government, uh, political economy.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then I completed the the academic part of law.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_04: They did a stint as a visiting professor at Queen's College City University of New York.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_04: In 1979 was a very interesting year in my life.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_04: The Grenada Revolution took place in March 1979.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I was subjected to exclusion from several islands in the region.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_04: People are panicking, thinking there was going to be revolutions all about.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_04: Imperialism was frantic, and governments were unsure as to what to take, what was taking place.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_04: I went home, I took a year off, a year sabbatical.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_04: And while I was home, the government in Barbados revoked my work permit.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_04: So I couldn't go back to the university.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_04: They rev they revoked it on the grounds that complete falsehood that I was an agent of Cuban and Soviet communism.
• 1:05:49
  Corie: Yeah, they'll be seeing you as a revolutionary.
• 1:05:55
  Corie: So But it wasn't the case you're saying you will not No no no completely false.
• 1:05:59
  Corie: Completely false.
• 1:06:00
  Corie: So what's the fear they have of you then?
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I used to write and talk fearlessly.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_04: Look.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_04: People don't understand.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_04: Right now, I make criticisms of the foreign policy of Donald J.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_04: Trump.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_04: I can't support this blowing up of people in Caribbean or Pacific waters.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_04: You can't be judge, jury, and executioner.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_04: And you give no explanation to any government.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I must accept that.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_04: If I accept that, it means that I have to roll over and play dead.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_04: And that I'm subservient to you and I'm a supplicant.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_04: I could never be that.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_04: Never in a million years.
• 1:06:56
  Corie: Regardless of the consequences.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_04: Regardless of the consequences.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_04: In any case, at 80 years, what are you going to do with me?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_04: The most you can do with me is to actually accelerate my demise.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I've had a pretty good innings.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm I'm I'm in reasonably good health, and my brain is still taking over well and so on and so forth.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_04: So they're not afraid of it.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not afraid of it.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_04: So that I don't, I can't support what he what they did in Venezuela, what they want to do in Cuba.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_04: This irrational war in Iran, you know, and doing doing the bidding for greater Israel and all the rest of it.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_04: I I I I can't.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_04: I can't support any of that.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_04: Now, because I will say that, persons would say, well, Ralph is anti-American.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely not.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_04: I have the highest regard for the American civilization.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's a civilization of ingenuity and creativity, which is absolutely amazing.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_04: They have built the most powerful country in the world.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_04: Towards the end of the 18th century, Nevis was more profitable to the British crown than New York.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_04: As absurd as that may sound today.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I cannot take up St.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and the Grenadines.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_04: And Kamla and Penny can't take up Trindad and Tobago and carry them to Vladivostok or the mouth of the Amo River.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: We are where we are.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_04: We have historical relations.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_04: Our people migrate, the cultural influences.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_04: We carry the benefits and the burdens of being next to the greatest power, economic and political, military power the world has ever seen.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_04: So as a practical matter, we have to come to terms with the United States of America.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_04: On the one hand, therefore, I can't have an infantile anti-Americanism that anything America does, I denounce them.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_04: That would be folly.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_04: It would be immature.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, that's an infantile disorder.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_04: On the other hand, don't expect me to be subservient and don't expect me to roll over and play dead.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, I think that Donald J.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_04: Trump would be very surprised and in some ways disappointed if we were just to roll over and play dead.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_04: So between those two extremes, there's a bundle of matters on which we can talk about and have agreement.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_04: And to use his language, make a deal, cut a deal.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_04: There are some things on which we have we can't agree upon, and we agree to disagree.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_04: Particularly those things which may be existential to us, real to us.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_04: And then there is another bundle of matters on which we have an agreed and settled condition of dissatisfaction.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_04: Purely as a practical matter.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_04: They would wish that we would do something different, but Yeah.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_04: You see different things.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_04: They're dissatisfied, but they could live with it.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, okay.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_04: There are things which we dissatisfied with them, we could live with it.
• 1:11:02
  Corie: As in a negotiation.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_04: Now, there are people who may say, what is this concept of living in matters which you don't agree upon?
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_04: That you live in a condition, an agreed condition of settled dissatisfaction.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Now there are lots of marriages which exist in the world in a condition of settled dissatisfaction.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_04: The children are too young, the children are too old.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_04: I am too old.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_04: I can't bother with that.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so on.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's normal.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_04: So in any relationship.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_04: So so when when I when I address issues like these, and persons may hear me make a criticism of Trump behave his armed forces behaving in the way in the Caribbean, and they're blowing up people and they tell me these are drug traffickers.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_04: Well, in the United States of America and in the Caribbean, to be a drug trafficker doesn't carry the death penalty.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_04: So how can you blow me up and kill me?
• 1:12:09
  Corie: Yeah, I suppose if even if you're tried and convicted, that's not what you're doing.
• 1:12:12
  Corie: But that's the point.
• 1:12:13
  Corie: Understood.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_04: I can't have my brain go vacant.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_04: I can't have my human sensibilities and my commitment to the common law.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_04: Presumption of innocence.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_04: Trying taking me before a court, present the evidence, free me or convict me as the case may be.
• 1:12:41
  Corie: But you just can't blow me out of the water.
• 1:12:43
  Corie: But you see, you said in the beginning that the lifeblood of the of the politics is the money.
• 1:12:48
  Corie: So I had to ask you if the money comes, because that it the compromises you're talking about standing firm on is the principles.
• 1:12:55
  Corie: But as you say, if you if they flood a party with money, does it change the way you see things?
• 1:13:00
  Corie: But the point is this the the irony of all of this.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_04: They're blowing up and killing people.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_04: But um they ain't gain you no money either.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: They gain you no money or they gain nobody no money.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_04: They gain nobody money and and they and they're taking the oil from Venezuela and give them have a chance to take the oil from somewhere else.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, all right.
• 1:13:29
  Corie: Because that's the nature of the beast.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_04: Now when I was in office, the Americans came to me.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_04: They said, We want you to take third country deportees, nationals whom we are deporting.
• 1:13:58
  Corie: When you say third country, what do you mean?
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_04: That is not from not from St.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent, but from somewhere else.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Not from America, but who they commit criminal offenses, they depart.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Or they want to send people who are refugees.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_04: But my first point, I say you can't send me people who are refugees.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Because once they're refugees, you under international law have given you have given them refugee status.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_04: You have to keep them.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_04: So purely as a matter of international law.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_04: In relation to the others, as you listen to me.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's not in your interest and it's not in my interest.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_04: Let me tell you why it is not in your interest.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_04: If you even send me five criminals a year, all you'd be doing is ticking a box because you have several thousands of them.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_04: You only want to tick the box and send five and ten for me to tell the fellas in Ven in Latin America, look, these nationalist governments take five, they take ten.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_04: You can take ten thousand.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_04: So take a box in me, thing.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_04: I say, but where it is also problematic is that five or ten every year, after five years, ten is fifty.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_04: Ten by five.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_04: They couldn't mash up my country.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_04: And you think it's one hate you have.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_04: And I am not taking them.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_04: Plus, of course, the history with our nationals whom we are obliged to take, when they're deported to St.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent, they'll deport them and they say they're deported because they've committed this or that offense.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_04: If I try to get information, and I've tried, give me the antecedents, give me the history of this individual.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_04: I don't get the history of the individual.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_04: So you could be sending for me a psychopath.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, you're a psychopath.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't know.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_04: And he comes back to St.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_04: I have to integrate this man back in.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_04: By the time I know he's a psychopath, he done he done do a holy power of the things.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_04: So even my own nationals, you're getting not giving me the information.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I said to them, explain to me why you want to send your dregs to me.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_04: Why don't you send some computer scientists to me?
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_04: The best and brightest.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_04: Why don't you send some of those to me?
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_04: I say, instead of those, you take in mine.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_04: How can you want to take mine, the best stuff that I have, and you want to send me the drugs from somewhere else?
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_04: I said, No man, I can't do that.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_04: And they ain't like that.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_04: But I would not have ever allowed them to do that to my to my country.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_04: But it does not mean that I don't admire the American civilization.
• 1:17:31
  Corie: Yeah, I hear that in everything you say.
• 1:17:32
  Corie: You know, you can see the differences that one is you versus the society of the world.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_04: So that you take this thing about the it can't be a the region can't be a zone of peace because you have criminal activity.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_04: That means there's no way in the world which is a zone of peace.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_04: Because all over the world there's criminal activity.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_04: When you say a zone of peace, the way it is used in the Caribbean context, it has two dimensions.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_04: Peaceful relations between states.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't mean it doesn't refer to criminal activity within the state or even between people moving from country to country and committing criminal activities.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_04: But there is no state carrying out war against any other state.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_04: So it has that dimension factually.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_04: We have a zone of peace, but it has a normative element.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_04: So it is a description, what is, but also a normative evidence at what we want to be, that it must always be a zone of peace, and we must make it even more peaceful.
• 1:18:51
  Corie: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 1:18:52
  Corie: I want to add to what you're saying about cricket.
• 1:18:54
  Corie: And there's a part of culture, I know that means a lot to you that we're here to talk about before we wrap.
• 1:18:58
  Corie: The music.
• 1:18:58
  Corie: There's something I saw again as a tele influencer, you know, I was watching it on social media day.
• 1:19:02
  Corie: And I'm looking for the day when a fellow by the name of Deja Palmer would have a concert in this country.
• 1:19:06
  Corie: You know, I say, boy, this man free, I want to go and see Cartel.
• 1:19:10
  Corie: Only to see the first time I seen Cartel on social media is by you.
• 1:19:14
  Corie: Your connection with Caribbean music and musicians.
• 1:19:18
  Corie: Well, I like music, but the one with Cartel.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_04: I am in my office.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_04: Cartel's lawyer, Isaac Bukanan, calls me.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_04: He said, You know that Cartel just came out of jail.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_04: Freed.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_04: But he has a health problem.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_04: We hear you have some specialists from Cuba and India to deal with what the problem that he has.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_04: Can he come to St.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent?
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_04: I said, sure.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um he can come.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_04: I said, but understand this.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_04: I'm motivated by the injunction in the book of Micah, the Old Testament prophet.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_04: What does the Lord require of us to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God?
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I'm doing this as an act of mercy for Cartel.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, Ralph bringing him to he comes into St.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and we treat him free during the week there.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_04: It made other people say we could have him come too because they were shunning him.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody was shunning him.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_04: I remember.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_04: I remember.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_04: And of course he brought Cartel on.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_04: He said Cartel is here.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_04: Comes on.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, is Da Vinci World boss?
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_04: This is a Jamaican world boss.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I am not Da Vinci World boss.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_04: I am the World Boss.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_04: And then he says to me, You say you know I have a child with a woman whose mother is from St.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_04: I said, What is the family name?
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_04: She told me, Cabral.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Boy, the Lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_04: That's my family.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_04: Serious.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_04: When he came to St.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent, I took him where the patriarch and matriarch used to live.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_04: The Cabral.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there are this world in all its infinite mysteries.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_04: Who did I sat Bokana and his lawyer who is now a member of parliament for the PNP?
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_04: Call me to ask about this.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_04: And there's this factor which we didn't know.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_04: And I agreed promptly and referenced the book of Micah.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_04: So that when people began on social media taking one side or the other, and some people say, Oh, you take a man.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, yeah.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_04: Convicted.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, he wasn't convicted, he was only charged.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, of course, yes, he was released.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_04: He was only charged.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, yeah.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_04: He had been convicted, but then his conviction was overturned.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_04: By the highest court in the land, the Privy Council.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_04: At least for Jamaica.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you do what you consider to be right.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes you may get it wrong.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_04: And there are people who still will disagree with me for allowing him to come to St.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_04: But I think it was the correct thing to do.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_04: I acted in the manner in which I acted.
• 1:22:54
  Corie: Yeah, it's trying to what you said in the beginning about when you're talking about your early life.
• 1:22:58
  Corie: I could see, I could see where it comes from in terms of your the way you see humans, the way you see people.
• 1:23:03
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Corie: Well, and then I saw you embrace the young brother.
• 1:23:06
  Corie: Coincidentally.
• 1:23:06
  Corie: Young brother, yes.
• 1:23:08
  Corie: This week I had a gentleman here by the name of First Class, you know what I mean?
• 1:23:11
  Corie: Class Gonzales.
• 1:23:12
  Corie: And your name came up randomly.
• 1:23:15
  Corie: He said, Boy, listen, he said, he said, I went home by the man.
• 1:23:18
  Corie: He said the man embraced me as if you know, so the musicians in the Caribbean.
• 1:23:23
  Corie: And I um I wear clacks.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, it's okay.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm a papa man.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a papa man.
• 1:23:35
  Corie: Listen, if I if I if they give me the chance, I keep it here all day.
• 1:23:39
  Corie: You could come and listen to your stories all the month.
• 1:23:41
  Corie: You could be hindy camera again and see.
• 1:23:45
  Corie: So I want to thank you.
• 1:23:46
  Corie: I'm one minute, right?
• 1:23:47
  Corie: I want to thank you for coming today at the moment also.
• 1:23:50
  Corie: Just to personally thank you as well, because I know that uh a politician could be a lonely world.
• 1:23:55
  Corie: I was looking at your your story is fascinating.
• 1:23:57
  Corie: I'm gonna look at the age.
• 1:23:58
  Corie: I was surprised when I saw the Uganda thing and your age, the age at which you went into politics and you chose a life that you may not have had to choose.
• 1:24:06
  Corie: Very, very difficult and it could be very lonely.
• 1:24:09
  Corie: And uh, I just want to personally thank you for taking that journey and to ask you as as now the lonely man in opposition, if this is where you're gonna call it quits when it comes, when the election comes back, or where you're thinking it's into your future.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_04: My I've told the parliament of St.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_04: Vincent and Uvenadines that my role in the opposition is very simple.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_04: To oppose, to propose, to expose, and to depose the current government constitutionally in the shortest possible time.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I've staked out what is my role.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_04: Simple, straightforward.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_04: So 2020 will be seen here again.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_04: Well, even though I'm not leading the party, I will I will be there on the platform.
• 1:24:54
  Corie: All right, good.
• 1:24:54
  Corie: God willing.
• 1:24:55
  Corie: All right, good.
• 1:24:55
  Corie: Well, hopefully, we have you back at that point in time.
• 1:24:57
  Corie: And when you come back, we need some uh and and and and tell tell Anil.
• 1:25:02
  Corie: Which Anil?
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_04: I'm staying at Bricks.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, doubles and coffee and bricks.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_04: And and and you can come and have a coffee with me.
• 1:25:11
  Corie: Alright, okay.
• 1:25:12
  Corie: I want to record.
• 1:25:16
  Corie: You know what I mean?
• 1:25:17
  Corie: You know the truth is I feel too a little hit enough.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_04: But then I don't know, I don't know about hitting it off, but but but I feel I don't have malice in my heart.
• 1:25:29
  Corie: I can see that, I can see that.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_04: I don't have malice in my heart.
• 1:25:32
  Corie: And you can as soon as I don't tell people as soon as you reach in here, people never stop laughing, and everybody in a good mood from this time.
• 1:25:39
  Corie: So thank you for glad you must.
• 1:25:40
  Corie: And ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be with the boat.
• 1:25:47
  Corie: Thank you very much.