Former UN ambassador speaks out against DLP government

New York, New York (TDN) —- Crispin Gregoire, former Dominica ambassador to the United Nations and architect of the 2005 Dominica Labour Party (DLP) election victory has added his voice to the growing opposition to prime minister Roosevelt Skerrit’s government selling of Dominican passports.

Former UN ambassador Crispin Gregoire.

The news is disturbing on two levels. It opens an additional window into the moral character of the Skerrit regime. We have known for some time that the regime is incapable of showing any regard to proper ethical and accountability standards when spending the treasury’s resources, as has been documented in the various reported scandals involving garbage bins, not to mention the prime minister’s own personal behavior with respect to ownership of property relative to his visible income.

In an interview with Q95 FM radio station over the weekend, Gregoire warned against the country’s falling credibility in the international community over the sale of diplomatic passports to men of ill repute.

The former ambassador who spent more than eight years at the United Nations confirmed recent press reports detailing the sale of Dominican passports warning that “Dominica risk coming under the scrutiny of the UN and world governments for the manner in which it continues to sell its passports.”

Ambassador Gregoire also revealed for the first time that following the withdrawal of the case against the Swiss government regarding Roman Laschin that the government lawyer received several death threats from persons linked to Laschin.

The government of Dominica had earlier taken the Swiss government to the International Criminal Court after it denied the credentials of Roman Laschin who was recommended to be Dominica’s ambassador to Switzerland. Laschin had previously purchased a diplomatic passport for an undisclosed sum.

Ambassador Gregoire successfully got the government to retract the lawsuit because in his view it would prove to be “a major source of embarrassment to the government and people of Dominica.”

In 2005, Gregoire served as the Chairman of the DLP election committee and was widely credited with securing its election victory. A longtime stalwart of the DLP, he helped engineer an unlikely election victory of the DLP by successfully merging with the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP).

During the radio interview he indicated that “in any other country the government would have fallen on the strength of the credible allegations made against it regarding the sale of diplomatic and other passports.”

Speaking directly to the Dominican people, Gregoire encouraged them to vote the DLP government out of office at the next elections if they hoped to rescue the country from the worrying direction that it had taken recently.