The rape allegation against Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, has been dropped.

A story that has captivated all Vincentians took another dramatic twist yesterday, when the island's Director of Public Prosecutions, (DPP) Colin Williams, personally took over the file against the Prime Minister, and announced that the matter would be discontinued.

"What I have done is in the best interest of justice," Williams told the Press yesterday.

Gonsalves had been served, and was due to appear before a Kingstown Court on February 22, to answer charges of rape and indecent assault that had been
laid against him by a 36-year-old policewoman.

In a press release yesterday, the DPP stated that although he was not required to give reasons for taking over any criminal case, nor to explain why any matter had been discontinued, "given the totality of the considerations in the present matter", he had decided to provide some information to the public.

He explained that one key factor leading to his decision was that the accuser had refused to furnish the police, or his office with a formal statement about the matter.

He also said the accuser's lawyers informed him
by letter that they would not provide the requested documentation, as they had filed a private criminal complaint, and in the circumstances could not
accede to his request.

"Criminal justice is about justice for everybody,
the accused and the accuser. A person can't just make an allegation about someone without being able
to substantiate it," Williams said.

He said the Commissioner of Police had provided
him with a file containing a number of statements, including one from an eyewitness, to the Prime Minister's activities that morning, and others from several police officers with whom the accuser spoke
and had told them separately, that the Prime Minister had kissed her, or tried to rape her.

None, the DPP said, reported that she said she had been raped.

Williams also said that there was also an absence
of medical or forensic evidence to support the constable's claim.

Lawyers for Gonsalves' accuser, however, say they will be filing papers in the country's High Court this morning, seeking an injunction to have Williams' decision set aside, and the matter re-evaluated
and re-opened.

Gonsalves, the first sitting head of Government in the Eastern Caribbean in recent memory to be accused of rape, flatly denied the charge last weekend at a news conference.

(Barry Alleyne in association with the Searchlight newspaper of St Vincent.)