Isaac laughs at Marshall’s wish for UPP members to be ‘turned into a pillar of salt’ and says some people are seeking relevance

D. Gisele Isaac, the chairman of the United Progressive Party (UPP),
is scoffing with amusement at statements made by a former Labour
Party representative about Party members who attended a function
at the The UWI-Five Islands campus.
 
On a recent radio outing, Senator Samantha Marshall declared that
past Political Leader Harold Lovell and MP Richard Lewis – in whose
Rural West constituency the university sits – should have turned
into a pillar of salt for attending the graduation exercise held on
Saturday, October 7.

Dr. Jacqui Quinn, during whose tenure as minister of education, the
campus was constructed, also came in for bitter criticism from one
of Marshall’s colleagues.

But had it not been for the UPP, The UWI would not have been able
to call the Five Islands campus home, says Isaac, who lectured in the
Undergraduate Department for 14 years, from 2002 to 2019.
 
Under the Baldwin Spencer Administration, the facility had been
purpose-built as a modern secondary school – on the
recommendation of the The University of the West Indies, itself – to
alleviate overcrowding at the Princess Margaret and Ottos
Comprehensive Schools, in particular.

However, after assuming office, the Browne Administration decided
to appropriate the facility for the purpose of locating the
university’s fourth landed campus.

Isaac recounts that, as the executive secretary at the Board of
Education, she was involved during the planning stages for the
construction of the Five Islands school, working along with Dr.
Quinn.

Refuting Marshall’s accusation that she “never wanted a university,”
Isaac notes that she once served on a sub-committee of the hoped-
for University of Antigua Working Committee.

The UPP chairman concludes that some Labour Party members are
seeking relevance, but she does not have time to waste on them. In
fact, she says, she pities Marshall who has enough internal troubles
of her own.
 
She says Marshall is trying to take her mind off the fact that she was
booted out as the St. Mary’s South candidate and replaced by a UPP
turncoat. Therefore, she could be disparaging the Party to make
herself feel better.

The UPP has said, repeatedly, that it has no issue with The UWI
expansion into Antigua and Barbuda. Rather, its issue was the
location. The Party felt that the former US Naval Base in Coolidge
would have been a better choice.