Robert Milton Cato

Robert Milton Cato (born June 3, 1915 in St. Vincent , † February 10, 1997 in Kingstown , St. Vincent) was a politician from St. Vincent and the Grenadines .

biography

During World War II he joined the Royal Canadian Army and served as a soldier in Europe . After his return to St. Vincent he began to get involved in local politics. In 1955 he was one of the founders of the St. Vincent Labor Party (SVLP) and was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the West Indian Federation between 1958 and 1962 as its representative . He later became chairman of the SVLP.

In May 1967 he succeeded Ebenezer Theodore Joshua as Chief Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. After this became an Associated State within the Commonwealth of Nations on October 27, 1969 , he remained Prime Minister again. In April 1972 the SVLP lost the election against an alliance of the New Democratic Party (NDP) under James Fitz-Allen Mitchell , who subsequently became premier.

In December 1974, the SVLP succeeded in the early elections against the NDP, so that Cato was again premier on December 8, 1974. Although the coalition he led collapsed in 1976, Cato could continue to serve as prime minister because the SVLP continued to have a majority in the legislative assembly.

After the sovereignty of the country on October 27, 1979, Cato was first prime minister and was confirmed as such in the elections to the legislative assembly ( House of Assembly ) carried out on December 5, 1979 on the basis of the new constitution . At that time, Cato was one of the last Prime Ministers of the Caribbean , who was already politically active at the time of the West Indian Federation. Although he was politically a socialist , he did not allow modern regional interpretations of socialism , but based his views exclusively on Marxism - Leninism . Both publicly and privately, however, he was a strong critic of the later revolution in Grenada under Maurice Bishop and developments in Jamaica under Michael Manley and Guyana under Forbes Burnham . Instead, he preferred establishing closer ties with the relatively conservative governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados in business. Good relations with Barbados existed in particular through the establishment of a joint coast guard and fisheries protection organization.

After the SVLP lost the elections in 1984, Cato was replaced as Prime Minister by James Mitchell on July 30, 1984.

Web links

• rulers.org