The minority opposition Democratic People’s Movement (DPM) has called on Grenadians to show support for Cuba as that Caribbean country continues to feel the impact of United States sanctions that have seriously affected the energy as well as socio-economic future of the country.
Cuba is experiencing its most severe economic and humanitarian crisis in decades, largely driven by a newly intensified “energy blockade” imposed by the United States. Following the US invasion of Venezuela, resulting in the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro on drug-related charges, Washington has threatened tariffs on any nation supplying oil to Cuba, resulting in a drastic reduction in fuel imports, forcing Cuba to shut down factories, schools, and non-essential state offices.
This escalation has led to widespread shortages of fuel, electricity, and basic necessities, with the island frequently suffering from nation-wide power outages.
Speaking at the Congress of the DPM on Sunday, the party’s leader and former foreign affairs minister, Peter David, said: “We are told to remain silent in the face of genocide, not to help neighbours who can’t breathe.”
He told supporters the essence of diplomacy is understanding, compromising and accommodating. “But there must be no excuse for surrendering. Not because we are small does it mean that we must cower and bend to every dictate, to every demand. As you know, sisters and brothers, we are at a most treacherous juncture in history.
“The world is now engulfed in discord. War has broken out in many regions and the global rules-based order has collapsed. What we have always believed in is being tested. We are told to remain silent in the face of genocide, not to help neighbours who can’t breathe and to adopt ingratitude because somehow that will curry us some favours.”
But David, who is the party’s sole representative in the Grenada parliament, said Grenadian parents had always spoken out against ingratitude as he welcomed the new Cuban ambassador to Grenada, Yadirys Echenique Paz, to the event.
“I don’t think I’m speaking out of tune if I stand here today and say this nation of ours is a grateful nation. We shall forever be grateful for the bonds and solidarity that have shaped the relations among our people in good times and in bad times. Please convey our gratitude to your government and people. Thank you,” David said.
Cuba played a pivotal role in Grenada during the 1979–1983 revolution, providing significant infrastructural, educational, and military support to the then Maurice Bishop’s socialist regime, notably building the Point Salines International Airport.
The Grenada Revolution came to an end in 1983, when the United States launched a military invasion of the island following the palace coup that had earlier resulted in the deaths of Bishop and several other members of his People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG). Several former PRG members, most notably then deputy leader, Bernard Coard, were sentenced to jail for their involvement in the killings.
Also addressing the Congress on Sunday was Arley Gill, a lawyer who is regarded as one of the country’s foremost advocates on reparations, who has been elected unopposed as deputy leader of the DPM.
Gill told supporters, “We continue to stand in solidarity with Cuba.” “Cuba has given us so much, if only now we can stand in solidarity with them and give them and lift our voices in support of the government and people of Cuba,” he added.
Gill, who returned here from the Netherlands where he had been “advocating in this ongoing struggle for reparative justice,” likened the struggle to what’s unfolding in Grenada, politically. “There is a direct link between the young black boy who went to sleep tonight on the Gold Coast of Africa to the youth hanging out in front Bucky Shopping Mall. The struggle which I am imploring all of us to embrace, those of my generation and even those immediately after me, is a rite of passage.
“Not defined by the Middle Passage, but coloured by it,” he told supporters, adding that the DPM has always had “my moral support (and) that was never in question.”
But he acknowledged that the “struggle” will take place in different stages and “I have learnt that you don’t join the movement, you get swept by it, and you become the movement and the movement becomes you.”
Gill, a former government minister, who also served as a magistrate in Dominica and Grenada’s ambassador to Caricom, is expected to contest the western parish of St John, considered by some analysts as one of the most open seats if general elections are called soon. “I believe I have a contribution to make, and I am of the considered view that I can make a difference,” Gill said.
Funny how a leftist communist party like the DPM uses the word “Democratic” in their name. Tell us, how many of your predecessors with the same ideology were actually democratic? Like you democratic friends in the Cuba government right?
You make comments such, “We are told to remain silent in the face of genocide”, and you claim to be on the side of Cuba, but you are only on the side of the government there. You need to go talk to Cubans outside of the party. Plenty of them are now living in Grenada because they have fled the hellhole of a country within the past several years. I don’t think a single one would ever call what is happening there a genocide. Why would cubans outside of Cuba support what it happening if it was a genocide? Absolutely ignorant and shameful comments.
People need to stay clear of DPM, David and Gill. They suffer from a sickness of the mind. If ever given power, they will put the country in complete ruin.