Why I would Vote Flanbo Instead Of Labour

TELL me you saw it coming. Tell me that you did not think that I liked Labour that much more, over the UWP because I wrote an article entitled, “Why Labour would get my vote over the UWP?”

Tell me that you did not complete reading the article because you had misconstrued my reason for writing it after you had read the first paragraph. Tell me that you are not that polarized and that because you love UWP so much that I must treat Allen Chastanet and Dominic Fedee like if they were the Holy Father or the Archbishop of Canterbury, that they could not do any wrong. A lot of us treat our leaders as if they were God Almighty, like they were infallible, and the Party as our upright and devout religion.

This week UWP gets my vote, (not because I hear change is coming to the UWP because Sarah is about to lead the party (best move ever) and she can speak Kwéyòl). It is because the incumbent has done nothing worthwhile to garner this independent’s vote. In Saint Lucia it is reasoned that we do not vote parties into power, we vote parties out. You know that feeling when you are trying to get home and you are on the bus and the driver is in first gear “ap i kaannove’w” and you just want to take another bus. Or when you are out drowning and you will catch at a straw.

So Allen Chastanet (Lord God Almighty) can become Prime Minister not because he speaks kweyol so well or he has some superfine talent but because you are just sick and tired of Kenny. You are still waiting for the jobs, jobs, jobs and the injection of the $100 million. Or you are just waiting for the unemployment figures to begin to take a down turn or for the government to stop making excuses for their failures and blaming everything on the last administration. Or you’re waiting for Kenny to bow out of politics but it just does not seem like it’s happening, much like a friend who you so pleasantly welcomed into your house but he becomes a fixture and you just want to show him the door and if you had your way you would hold him by a mere thread and pelt him out through a glass window.

So this election campaign you can brace yourself for all the negative advertisements. It has already started and it will be worse than what happened in the run-up to the 1997 elections. Remember the pink mealy bug campaign? Even I was caught up, deceitfully, in their “say yes to YES campaign” while I was at Teachers’ College on the Morne.

Anyone honest with themselves will tell you that this has not been a productive term for the SLP administration. They really have nothing to dangle before our eyes. No major infrastructural development. No major investment project. No positive GDP growth. No decrease in the unemployment figures. They could not rebuild Saint Jude’s Hospital in five years. The general hospital cannot open. The airport redevelopment not happening. Do be surprised election coming and they will find money to do all the things they could not do in five years. SLP can’t show slate. They can’t show the cards. In a period when we needed ingenuity and innovation they provided us with excuses, played the blame game and recycled initiatives which may have worked for other countries but one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

My friend who was not happy with my telling on Chastanet and Fedee last week because he is a party loyalist, his bones maybe smiling this week. But my friends the quagmire of partisan politics that we are in is ruining this country. Come on! Tell me I am not the only little boy in the empire who sees that the emperor needs new clothes. He’s as naked as can be but we fail to be honest with ourselves.