Member of Parliament Trevor Prescod, who was removed from his post as Minister of Environment and National Beautification when Prime Minister Mia Mottley shuffled her Cabinet last week, is declaring that he has done nothing wrong in the country to deserve the treatment he said he has endured.
Breaking his silence, days after being removed from the post, Prescod told those gathered at this morning’s Emancipation Day celebrations, held at the Emancipation Station, also known as Bussa, Haggatt Hall, St Michael, that he never stole even a toffee from the state.
“Do you believe that I look so outdated that I cannot contribute to the development of Barbados? And I see men much younger and women much younger than me that can’t get up those stairs, serving at the highest level. I have a lot to tell you, but I am not going to tell you all now.
“This is not the time. I only came out this morning because I had no choice, because I didn’t want the interpretations to go around that I am in such a state of despondency, that I can’t even get out of my bed, and I am turning senile, and I am concentrating on committing suicide,” he said.
The MP for St Michael East vowed that wherever he goes, whether it is “BLP, DLP” he will always be the servant of the people of Barbados. He said whoever wants him, must “take it, or leave it as I am”.
Prescod noted that if he could live forever to do the work that allow his people to be recognized as equals in society and everywhere black people live, he would do it.
He recalled that two years ago when he was at the door of death, at the 11th hour, when he had given up, he stayed in the fight even though he had no energy to fight the colon cancer. He said he had one of the most severe operations, and when his friends visited him in hospital they saw a skeleton with a thin layer of flesh.
“I had to learn to walk again. You believe that that man, who they now say is dead, who they now say that I am posting things on Facebook about I want to commit suicide, and I have not been on Facebook for a long time.
“I can only survive with you. It is the people who stood with me before that I ask to stay with me now,” he said.
Meanwhile, Prescod also issued the reminder that there are a number of “uncle toms” in society who will never allow the masses to escape the shackles of modern slavery. He said that history shows clearly that nobody from a working class family can be at the forefront of the revolution for the freedom of the people.
““They use us over and over again to impress upon black people that they are here to create economic enfranchisement. Well I will tell you at some time, the economic enfranchisement that they created. I will tell you in case some of it doesn’t come in the paper.
“These uncle toms, who write in the newspaper, some of them leaving school, with scripture in home economics and all of a sudden some of them become professors of philosophy in all different types of disciplines, and hide behind school ties, trying to make you believe that they are speaking truth, and they have great vision and clarity with the required intuition to take us somewhere.
“They are the greatest uncle toms and sell out political racketeers. They trick us over and over again. I don’t have any right to anything, but I fight for what I want and trust me, all I am saying to you this morning in the most passive way that I can say it, just read Garvey and see how they treat us,” Prescod said. (AH)
