(Trinidad Guardian) St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves says “unsuccessful attempts” had been made to impugn the character of the former president of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Dr Hyginus “Gene” Leon, whom he described as “a distinguished son of our Caribbean civilisation from St Lucia”.
Last month, lawyers representing Leon, gave the CDB until May 4 “to negotiate an amicable separation” indicating also that their correspondence should be viewed “as our client’s pre action protocol letter” regarding the entire situation.
In a five-page letter sent to the chairman of the CDB Board of Governors, Harjit Sajjan, who is also Canada’s Minister of International Development, Gonsalves said the investigator’s report is “available to those entitled to it as a right”.
“I have read it carefully. Its contends are threadbare and underwhelming. The report seeks to weave tattered threads into a twisted fabric upon which to ground a narration to justify the Bank’s actions; but it has failed, and all persons of reasonableness, judicious temper and balanced judgement, would so conclude.”
Gonsalves wrote that on the central salacious allegation “which excited the prurient at home and abroad, there was absolutely no evidence; the story makes amusing reading, if the matter of the Bank’s President’s peremptory removal from office was not so serious.
“This allegation, and the imputations connected thereto, probably had its origin in a mind suffused by a starched Anglicanism, or an obsessive Evangelical purity laced with hypocrisy and misogyny,” he added.
Gonsalves said that the “flimsy” nature of the evidence presented in the investigator’s report and the “concocted narrative of malfeasance or wrong-doing, lack persuasiveness; there is nothing compelling here.”
He said for him, “Gene Leon’s integrity remains intact, though unsuccessful attempts were made to have it impugned. He comes out of this sordid matter without blemish or wrong-doing attached to him. This distinguished son of our Caribbean civilisation ought not to be lynched, metaphorically, any further.”
