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Prime Minister Gonsalves received immediate attention after the incident.

PM Gonsalves on the mend after visit to Barbados hospital

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves is well and expected to make a complete recovery after being flown to Barbados for medical attention. With images and news of an injured Gonsalves spreading across the region like wildfire in an event that panged so similarly to the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol, he spoke publicly for the first time on the situation.

 

Arriving in Barbados on Thursday through arrangements made by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, he made the trip on advice from doctors to have his condition ascertained. Spending the night under the care and surveillance of neurologist Dr. John Gill and one of his doctors from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Gonsalves gave an update upon leaving the Queen Elizabeth Hospital yesterday. “He discharged me this morning. He has concluded from his examinations, his assessments, enquiry and tests that there are no neurological deficits. However, as a result of the concussion which I have suffered, I have to have monitored over the next four to six weeks my condition, and to do, in four to six weeks time, another series of tests and examination to see if any bleeding emerges in the brain as a result of the concussion.” he said.

 

Going on to say that he intended to follow the medical team's advice to the letter, Prime Minister Gonsalves revealed that he was hit in the top of his head and that the injury could have rendered far more serious damage. “I take the assault upon me, not just as an injury or an act of battery, but when you throw a stone or some other projectile at someone with the intention to hit them in the head – and given the delicate nature of one's head – you have in mind the intention to kill. You have the intention to cause serious bodily harm because the object which you're throwing doesn't have a laser designed to miss me. The intention was to hit me – and they did – and to cause me serious damage or even loss of life.” he said.

Thanking members of his personal security team and the individual police officers who sought to ensure his safety during the ordeal and also condemning those that celebrated the attack on him, Gonsalves said once he was in a fit frame of mind and body to do so, he would point fingers at who he held responsible. “I will speak later as to who I hold personally responsible for this attempt upon me. The statement from the Office of the Prime Minister condemned the act of violence against me and that of the individual perpetrator, but equally to be condemned are those who instigated and continue to instigate against my personal life and the backroom authors of this kind of violence. I know whom I will call out as the person whom I hold personally responsible.”

 

The parliamentary representative for North-Central Windward, who has won overwhelmingly in every election since 1994 said that he respected the constitutional and lawful right of all to protest but noted that all elected officials also had the right to enter and exit parliament unhindered. “No group of instigators, no handful of provocateurs or those who are instigating violence or authoring violence against the person of the Prime Minister and the representative for North-Central Windward would be able to subvert the work of parliament or the parliamentary process.” (MP)

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