On a weekend of heightened political activity here, the considered main opposition National Democratic Congress staged what political analysts here called an impressive convention in rural St Patricks on Sunday.

It was the same afternoon the top brass of the ruling New National Party held another of its "walkabouts" in the west coast constituency of St John's. Also on Sunday, the Grenada United Labor Party held a general council meeting in St Andrew to plan for its own convention next week and the fringe People's Labour Movement held another in a series of public meetings.

But the biggest of the events was the NDC convention where over two and a half thousand people including 400 delegates heard re-elected leader Tillman Thomas make his case for Grenada's own 'regime change'.

Thomas was delivering the feature address hours after he and the entire executive of the party was re-elected unopposed at the meeting.

Declaring "we ready now", Thomas said that Grenada deserves a regime change in elections which are widely expected this year because "they are fed up with a government tainted by corruption."

"No amount of concrete structures can plaster the shame, which we as a nation have had to endure in the last four years. No amount of impressive hundred dollar bills, whether they come in t-shirts or by whatever means, can buy away our collective pain," Thomas declared.

His reference to hundred dollar bills was being made four years after the Grenada opposition claimed that the ruling NNP bribed people with payments in t-shirt for their votes. However NNP has consistently denied the charges which have never been conclusively proven.

The Keith Mitchell administration has spent millions of dollars on a number of infrastructural projects including a national stadium, ministerial complex and an extension of the general hospital since it first came to office in 1995.

But Thomas said the government has concentrated on "building monuments and not people."

He said however the strongest case for "regime change in Grenada" is what he called "the endemic corruption the government has encouraged."

"Lately, in the current international political discourse we have heard a lot about regime change. Well sisters and brothers, Grenada is due for a regime change," he quipped.

Thomas declared: "Now that election is coming, you hear them talking about integrity legislation and inquiries into corruption. We have struggled for four years to get the issues of integrity and transparency on the national agenda. The people have cried out about the government’s mismanagement. But in an attempt to hoodwink all of us on the eve of an election, they say they are ready for the establishment of integrity legislation."

"This country badly needs integrity legislation, but we cannot trust a corrupt administration to effectively deal with corruption. They have lost the moral authority to do so," he said.

"We can’t trust the Keith Mitchell administration to voluntarily clean up corruption," the NDC leader quipped.

"This regime has sold our passports, but they have failed to sell us a vision. This regime has built monuments to themselves but has failed to build our people," Thomas further declared.

NDC is considered the strongest of the three opposition parties, but the ruling NNP which now has 14 seats in the 15-member parliament is widely tipped to win re-election though with a reduced majority.

But with another upbeat convention, the second in two years, General Secretary Peter David said the revival of NDC is complete following its drubbing in the 1999 polls.

"A wind of change has begun to blow in Grenada. Two years ago people were asking if we can revive the party. Now they are saying we can win this thing," he said.


Supplied by CARIBUPDATE