St Lucia’s Housing Minister Richard Frederick has quit his post after his US visas were revoked by Washington.
In a broadcast on Sunday, he also said he now understood how Guyana’s Top Cop Henry Greene and others felt after their visas were revoked.
“The latest blow from the American Embassy has certainly hurt me. I now understand how the Commissioner of Police from Guyana felt, I now understand how the minister from Jamaica felt, I now understand how the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States felt, all of them having their visas revoked,” Frederick said, blaming his “sworn political enemies” for the situation.
According to the St Lucia Star he proclaimed his innocence of any wrongdoing
In the address carried on CHOICE TV on Sunday at 8pm, Frederick announced that come Monday he would no longer be responsible for the ministerial portfolio.
Frederick began by reminding the nation he had been a police officer and a practicing lawyer before he entered politics.
According to the St Lucia Star, Frederick said: “I have learnt much about life being a lawyer in a country where the majority cannot afford legal representation. I experienced firsthand the unequalled personal satisfaction that comes from standing up win or lose for what you know is right–even when the prejudiced majority would have you play it safe, turn your back and walk away. But perhaps the most important lesson I learnt from being a lawyer in St Lucia is that you should never prejudge. In the same way you cannot determine the quality of a book’s contents from looking at its cover, so you cannot know the content of a man’s heart from looking at his clothes or the size of his house or the car that he drives.”
Frederick noted that the Saint Lucia Constitution promises accused persons the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
He went on: “It was with that Constitutional guarantee utmost in my mind that I defended both the underprivileged poor underdogs of our society as well as other more fortunate who found themselves in need of someone to stand between them and a supposed jury of their peers. As a practicing lawyer I made some fine, grateful friends but I made very powerful enemies, with state trappings at their disposal. It was the view of many misguided brothers and sisters, among them close relatives, that those accused of certain crimes ought to be denied legal representation, thrown to the dogs, locked away in cages and forgotten. It did not occur to these otherwise fine law-abiding citizens that what they wished for was not simply unfair but was also absolutely unconstitutional. Or that it was not in their best interests to deny others of the right to a defense. After all who knows when it will be our turn to be declared guilty until proven innocent. Even as I made the case for our Constitution and Human Rights, even as I insisted that we should in the best interest of justice for all consider our less fortunate brethren innocent until proven guilty not the reverse, it never occurred to me that I might one day find myself being judged guilty without even the suggestion of a fair hearing. Maybe I was subconsciously thinking that if I ever found myself in such a predicament ‘No big thing I can take care of myself, after all I am a lawyer.’ ”
