St. Vincent: Government minister lays COVID-19 vaccine blame on former prime minister

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Jul 22, CMC – Health Minister Daniel Cummings has rejected the long circulated claim that the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Simone Keizer-Beache, was responsible for the controversial COVID19 vaccine mandate that led to the dismissal of hundreds of public workers in 2021. Cummings told Tuesday’s parliamentary debate on the Compassionate Gratuity Bill that the blame has been wrongly placed on the CMO insisting that the policy was driven by former prime minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. “I am here to say categorically that is not the truth. I am here to say that COVID madness was the brainchild of the former prime minister who brought it, who insisted on it and who would not hear from any professional voice,” Cummings told legislators. Gonsalves has repeatedly said publicly that his government acted on Dr.Keizer-Beache’s advice, and she has never distanced herself from the policy and also gave evidence in defence of the mandate in the lawsuit that public sector unions brought challenging the government’s actions. In 2023, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court ruled the mandate unconstitutional, but the Court of Appeal overturned that decision in a 2-1 decision. The case is awaiting final determination by the London-based Privy Council, the country’s highest and final court. It is the second time in recent weeks that Cummings, who had criticised the mandate while in opposition, has attempted to reframe the public narrative about how the mandate was conceived and who should be held politically accountable for its consequences. Earlier, government legislator Andrew John, revisited the human impact of the 2021 mandate, which required vaccination for certain categories of public workers and resulted in the dismissal of more than 500 employees, many of them already on low wages and without. John described the policy as “wickedness to the highest order” and said affected workers had suffered “so much loss”, including stalled careers and lost years of service. Cummings in his presentation adopted similarly language, calling the policy “COVID madness” and using it as an example of what he characterised as a vindictive and spiteful style of governance by the former administration: “When you, for 25 years, operated… with such bile and spitefulness, when anyone who doesn’t agree with you must feel the wrath of your power… That is not how you treat people,” he said, drawing a contrast with what he said was the previous government’s approach to public servants whose relatives were in opposition politics. Recalling his own past, he said that after he entered politics, his wife — then president of the Family Court — was removed from her position. He noted that the late Arthur Williams, a former attorney general condemned the move, expressing his opposition in a newspaper commentary. Cummings then applied that example to Keizer-Beache, whose husband, Glen Beache, served as a government legislator from 2005 to 2010 under the previous Gonsalves administration. “Dr. Simone Keizer has never been in politics. Her husband was,” Cummings said, adding “should we, as a government, punish Dr. (Keizer), who has given such quality service to this country, because her husband is in politics other than ours? I say, Mr. Speaker… hell no. Hell no.” Cummings insisted that professional merit, not political association, must guide the treatment of senior public servants. “I defend and support every public servant on merit. And this government… led by Dr. (Godwin) Friday, is absolutely supportive of this mission of working with all our people to deliver the service required,” he said.