GRENADA: Let Them Eat Bananas

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"I wouldn't kill a moth, spider, snake or lizard," he told TIME Correspondent Bernard Diederich. "I don't believe in violence. I'm a spiritual man. I am in the mystical world. Few people know how spiritually, mystically inclined I am. They say that man is afraid to unlock the door to himself. I am not one who has to be afraid. My opponents can't beat me. They are based on negativity. I am positivity. When they hate, I love. I send out waves of love to them. I pray for them. They hate me so much they can't eat and they can't sleep. But I laugh, I play tennis, I play cricket, I do yoga exercises, I dance, and I am happy inside. Very happy." Patting his flat stomach and flexing his muscles, he added: "And I am strong inside."

Divine Plan. Gairy claims that he has been chosen by God to lead Grenada's 110,000 people and raise his 133-sq. mi. country to greatness. "God has a divine plan for Grenada," he says. "The plan is self-determination for the people. Nobody can stop it. It has come for the people of Grenada. And I have been appointed to carry out this divine plan." A fortune teller once told him that "a little man shall come from the East." (Gairy was born on the eastern side of the island and is 5 ft. 7 in. tall.) "Yes," he assures anyone who cares to listen, "I am that man. It was all arranged long before I was born, my role in all this."

With an economy that is rotting away-quite literally-before their eyes, and widespread fear that Gairy will perpetuate his incipient reign of terror, Grenadians may eventually decide that Gairy's divine plan does not meet the needs of their down-to-earth little islands. That concern was heightened a few hours before independence, when Maurice Bishop was arrested and clamped in jail. In unconscious imitation of Marie Antoinette, Gairy said: "Grenada is a Garden of Eden. The people must eat bananas and local fruit in place of imported rice and flour."