Normal: cricket is only played in the former British colonies (except the United States). In the English-speaking Caribbean, in India, in East Africa, in Australia etc… It has its world championship and it is taking place these days on the island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, not very far from us. We are not going to comment on the different matches since we, the French-Creole speakers, know absolutely nothing about it, but we will focus on the joy of the Prime Minister of Saint-Vincent: Ralph Gonsalves.
He descends from these indentured workers from the island of Madeira who were introduced into the Caribbean by the English, just like the Indians and the Chinese, after the abolition of slavery. Madeira, in fact, an archipelago located in the middle of the Atlantic, was uninhabited when the Portuguese seized it at the beginning of the 15th century and planted sugar cane there, in which slaves from Guinea worked. A genetic study from 2019 showed that at least 23% of current Madeirans have African genes. It is the native island of the great footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and that of the grandparents of the current Prime Minister of Saint-Vincent, whom his compatriots affectionately nickname “Comrade Ralph”.
It is rare to see a head of state as happy as Ralph Gonsalves. Currently, he is attending, as can be seen in the photos, the matches of the World Cricket Championship. He shakes hands, kisses children, laughs with everyone without bodyguards. No one seems bitter when the GDP per capita of Saint-Vincent is only 9,125 dollars (around 8,000 euros) while that of Martinique is 24,110 euros. Why, despite a GDP per capita 3 times higher than that of the Vincentians, do the Martinicans still shout, protest, vituperate, denounce etc…? We leave it to the reader to answer this enigma but we would ask him to look carefully at the photos: we do not see any Vincentian in rags, hungry or ready to flee abroad.
This is not the first time that on this site we have devoted an article to Ralph Gonsalves and his various activities as Prime Minister. He always looks happy and not at all worried about his safety. As if, strangely, running a territory whose GDP per capita is 8,000 euros is much safer, more enjoyable, than doing so for a territory whose GDP is 24,000 dollars.
Brief…
NB. Ralph Gonsalves, who is in his… 5th term, always democratically elected and re-elected, has only risked his life once, only once. While he had just been publicly vaccinated against Covid-19, as all the heads of state of the Caribbean have done (unlike their cowardly Martinican alter egos), a lady in her fifties, a merchant in the capital Kingston, approached him and threw a rock at his head. Photos of Gonsalves’ face dripping with blood went around the world and he had to be rushed to Barbados to have an MRI because the largest hospital in Saint Vincent did not have the equipment to carry out this examination. As for the rabid anti-vax, she only got a week in prison, a bit like the guy who slapped Macron and who was sentenced to 3 months in prison. We are entitled to ask ourselves a question: if it had happened to Xi Yi-ping, Putin or Kim Jong Un, what sanction would the aggressor have received?
2024-06-20 04:05:38
#World #Cricket #Championship #Vincent
