Vincentian Broadcaster Laid To Rest

Contact: Prime Minister's Press Secretary

Friday, March 17, 2006 - “Unthinkable, unbelievable and unacceptable!” That's how the head of the Methodist Church in the Eastern Caribbean has described the gruesome murder of the late Press Secretary and Personal Aide to Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Officiating at Wednesday's funeral for the late Glenn Jackson, Reverend Victor Job, Superintendent of the Methodist Church in the sub-region said it was “a demonic tragedy.”

Addressing the thousands who gathered inside and outside the small Kingstown Methodist Church in the centre of the nation's capital, Rev Job said: “While the anthropologists say that man is superior to the other animals because he can imagine his own death, no one could imagine dying like Glenn Jackson was killed.”

Jackson's dead and naked body was found in the back of his parked vehicle near his home on March 6 with multiple stab wounds, but the pathologists said he died from a single bullet to the back of his head.

The Methodist minister took issue with those who said “it was the will of God” that he should die this way. He said: “Such is never God's will, as He too suffered when His Son was crucified for our sins.”

Rev Job called on mourners and the entire Vincentian nation to “use this tragedy to begin a process of healing and change for the better.”

Also attending and addressing the funeral service was Prime Minister Gonsalves, who was visibly distraught as he recalled the life and times of his close fiend. He promised that “the assassin or assassins will be caught and punished.”

Several members of Jackson's family – his wife, his mother and step father, as well as professional and political colleagues addressed the funeral service, which lasted approximately three hours.

Following the funeral service, a massive carnival-like procession left the Kingstown Methodist Church and headed for the nearby cemetery, with thousands of mourners from all walks of life singing, chanting and dancing their way to the gravesite where the final remains of the nation's best known broadcaster were laid to rest.

Prime Minister Gonsalves has indicated that a scholarship will be established in the name of the late broadcaster for students of journalism, so that Glenn Jackson's legacy and example as a pioneer of talk radio on the island could be emulated.

Jackson was admired for his role as the talk show host who led the battle in St. Vincent and the Grenadines against the challenge to the Windward Islands Banana Industry by US companies in Latin America, as well as for his role in galavanizing national support for removal of the telecommunications monopoly that eventually resulted in the introduction of cellular telephones in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Jackson was 44 when he was killed and he left to mourn his wife Susan and two children, Glendon and Ian.

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