By Hudson George
The recent spread of COVID-19 virus in Grenada exposes the lack of democracy and the failure among intelligent people to engage in open round table discussions. The culture of political and religious leader’s selfish interest in guarding their respectful organisations is creating more divisions and ignorance than embracing unity.
Even though Grenadians today are more educated in terms of academic achievement than their parents and grandparents, they failed to be opened-minded with the ability to hold healthy discussions with good reasoning and critical thinking skills, without holding animosity against each other.
It is unfortunate, in this present day and age to see educated people so selfish and divided when it comes to politics and personal interest. Those who know better keep are instigating divisions instead of working together. Such behavior is very common among political activists on both sides of the political fence.
The so-called bright intelligent politicians from the various different political parties are avoiding each other. They prefer to make the COVID pandemic crisis a political issue in order to gain popularity among eligible voters.
On the other hand, religious leaders are not making an effort to work together with the Ministry of Health to deal with pandemic crisis. They are not encouraging their church members to get vaccinated. They prefer to remain silent, as if they are waiting for some kind of divine miracle interventions from God to cure the disease.
Now, that COVID-19 is spreading within the general population as expected, with the influx of visitors coming to enjoy themselves in the nice a beautiful tropical weather, since the government opened up the ports of entry, commonsense alone is enough to know that such an invitation opened the door for COVID-19 virus.
Nevertheless, some people chose to play the blame game. Pro government supporters and sections of the Christian religious communities are blaming the Jab Jab masqueraders protest for the spread of the pandemic even though the most new cases of the virus presently are in the south of the island where there were no large jab jab masquerader’s gatherings but an influx of new visitors.
Others are saying that the government quarantine policy for visitors is too short. They are claiming that, quarantine visitors for only two days with a free negative test result is risky and can create a window for the disease to spread in the wider communities, if some of the visitors are healthy carriers allowed to mingle in the wider society.
As the blame game continues, it is not expected that the government will close its ports of entries for visitors. The government is cash-strapped for money to keep the economy floating. They cannot close the airports and seaports. Therefore, they are sacrificing the citizens for political survival, as it is the norms of all governments globally in this present pandemic crisis.
What is very alarming is that those same politicians and their loyal activists are very quick to blame social media when they are chastised by concern citizens who are using Facebook and Instagram to air views of discontentment about what is going on in the country.
And even though some people are using social media as their outlet to spread conspiracy theories and fake news sometime, there are others who use social media to inform and educate. So, it is unfair to criticise all the news we are reading on social media because politicians and religious leaders also spread propaganda too, when it suits their interest.
In conclusion, the latest news from Grenada is that the country has recorded it first local death from COVID-19. According to reliable news report, the dead person is the wife of a local church pastor from and she was not vaccinated.
Now, the big question is: Will the death of a pastor wife from COVID-19 open the door for religious leaders to cooperate with the Ministry of Heath to encourage citizens to be vaccinated to curb the virus, rather than remaining silent and waiting for a miracle from divine intervention?
It is time they stop the blame game, so that the people will put the hatred aside and get vaccinated to end this pandemic.
