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LABORIE MAN ON A MISSION

UWP candidate for Laborie, Francisco Jn. Pierre

Candidate Wants To Revive Agriculture, Provide Jobs.

Image UWP candidate for Laborie, Francisco Jn. Pierre
UWP candidate for Laborie, Francisco Jn. Pierre

AS political parties continue to identify candidates for the next general election, one contender has come forward with compelling reasons for his decision to join the race, although he faces a daunting task.

Francisco Jn. Pierre who scored a 25-9 win over Benny Chitolie last Wednesday evening to become the United Workers Party’s candidate for Laborie has pointed to the need to revitalize agriculture and put his fellows Laborians back to work as motivating factors for stepping forward.

Thirty-four financial members of the party’s constituency council voted in the process with six another abstaining. High-ranking party officials were present at the run-off, including Party Leader, Allen Chastanet, who said his party is confident that it can finally bring the seat home.

The VOICE spoke with Jn. Pierre yesterday, during which conversation Jn. Pierre said his decision to contest the upcoming election stems from a number of challenges faced by his fellow constituents, including the loss of their livelihoods. He said the traditionally agriculture-dependent constituency is now virtually a wilderness.

“One of the main things I am looking to do for Laborie is putting people back to work,” Jn. Pierre told The VOICE. “We have a situation where most of the farmers have been displaced one way or the other in terms of banana farming. If you go through Banse right now, bananas are almost non-existent.”

Jn. Pierre said self-employment would empower people to feed themselves, adding that agriculture has to be the mainstay of the economy and there must be a strong linkage between agriculture and tourism. He said when the country moved into a tourism-based economy in 1997, the marriage between agriculture and tourism failed to take place, resulting in the importation of food to feed both the local population and tourists visiting our shores.

The Laborie MP-hopeful also sees sports as a major avenue for the employment of young people. He cited Darren Sammy, Johnson Charles and Levern Spencer as some of the successful sports people who have shown Saint Lucia’s capability to compete at the highest level. By getting involved in sports, he believes the high unemployment among the youth can be reduced.

Electorally, Jn. Pierre faces an uphill battle. Traditionally, Laborie has always been SLP stronghold with incumbent SLP candidate, Alva Baptiste, representing the seat in Parliament since 2006. Nevertheless, Jn. Pierre said he has no fear about taking on the challenge, adding that he would not throw his cap into a race that he was not capable of winning. His service to the community, he said, speaks volumes enough.

“I have been serving the people of Laborie for the past thirty-something years in many capacities, including youth and sports councils, farmers’ organizations, clubs or the Laborie Credit Union, where I’ve been since 1989,” Jn. Pierre said. “So I’ve been at the service of the people of Laborie.”

He added: “Laborie is the bedrock of the Labour Party and we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we can just walk in and win Laborie just like that. I am of the firm opinion that there’s no seat in Saint Lucia that remains SLP or UWP if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. Political parties don’t own seats and I am out to prove that theory: that Laborie can change.”

Jn. Pierre said he joined the United Workers Party in August this year. He said he was a member of the Saint Lucia Labour Party since 1987 and was at the forefront of Labour Party campaigns in Laborie after SLP MP, Neville Cenac, crossed the floor that year. He was actively involved with former Laborie MP Velon John’s elections campaigns in 1992 and 1997 “but went kind of dormant in Labour Party politics after 1997”. He’s no newcomer to politics, he said.

The father of the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, Jadia Jn. Pierre-Emmanuel stated that while he and his daughter share different political views, there will not be any conflict when it comes to his family being in politics.

“There will be nothing personal. My daughter has her political affiliation and I choose to be affiliated with whichever political party I want at this point in time. My daughter will live her political life while I live mine,” Jn. Pierre stated.

He also described his contender, Benny Chitolie, “an outside brother” and himself “a son of Benny’s mother”. He said Chitolie came into the race at the eleventh hour, but welcomed the challenge. After the results were read on Wednesday, Chitolie pledged his support for Jn. Pierre and the party, which Jn. Pierre welcomes.

“We’re close-knit people. With me, Benny and the others, it makes the work even lighter. So no one is excluded from this campaign once we do it in an honourable way,” Jn. Pierre explained.

With Wednesday’s run-off out of the way, Jn. Pierre said he will now be “canvassing the constituency officially”. He expressed gratitude to Laborie and its surrounding communities for their support over the years, adding that he will need their support in his upcoming campaign. What many people see as insurmountable, he said, can be achieved with such support.

“I know that when it comes to Laborie, the seat has been Labour,” Jn. Pierre said. “But Obama did it and I think we can do it also. So I wish the people of my constituency will give me this opportunity to represent them in Parliament.”

Stan Bishop began his career in journalism in March 2008 writing freelance for The VOICE newspaper for six weeks before being hired as a part-time journalist there when one of the company’s journalists was overseas on assignment.

Although he was initially told that the job would last only two weeks, he was able to demonstrate such high quality work that the company offered him a permanent job before that fortnight was over. Read full bio...

7 Comments

  1. You talking about synergy of agronomics and tourism in the manner that our leader SHOULD HAVE when he was tourism czar-
    and with agriculture rich Jamaica contacts (Air Jamaica) -to boot!
    Monsieur, keep on the down low with your puppet master- your gonads are bulging your Levis 501 🙂
    The Psych Literature has much to say about the early developmental relationships between the parents of the opposite sex of their children.
    FATHER- Daughter is “typically” a more powerful bond than Mother -Son
    Electra Complex versus Oedipal Complex is the most primitive outline offered b Ziggy Freud
    Let’s dip into more modern outlines and juxtapose against your summary brush off about Jadia and your differences:

  2. Do consider the following as mild vetting given:
    -an article written in column of this paper interviewing Jadia -biographics
    -the apparent brush off by dad of the spectacular political differences between father and daughter
    – our apparent modelling of PETER JUDAS JOSIE
    The following exhibits focus on the relationship between you and Jadia – during her formative developmental milestones:
    Exhibit A-

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-out/201307/how-dads-shape-daughters-relationships

    (if there was a dad or other male caregiver in your early life, he probably set the first model of how a relationship with a man would be. And for better or for worse, regardless of circumstances, children love their parents/caregivers unconditionally and accept the attachment and love that is (or is not!) given in return as normal. Our first attachment patterns shape our expectations for future attachments. Overtly and also unintentionally, our parents teach us how to approach our lives and relationships – they teach us how to express and receive love, how to handle disagreements, how to process feelings, etc. Our parents shape and color the lens through which we see and organize meaning about other human interactions.

    So a woman’s early relationship with dad, who is usually the first male object of her love, shapes her conscious and unconscious perceptions of what she can expect and what is acceptable in a romantic partner.)

  3. Exhibit B

    http://www.child-psych.org/2009/05/father-daughter-bonds-and-future-dromantic-relationships.html

    The authors studied 78 teens and young adults (average age 19), who reported on the quality of their relationship with their fathers and their current boyfriends. Three specific relationship domains were examined, namely: communication, trust, and time spent with their boyfriends/fathers.

    The results:

    1. Girls with good communication with their fathers also had significantly better communication with their boyfriends when compared to girls with low communication with their fathers.
    2. Girls with high levels of trust with their fathers also had significantly better communication and trust with their boyfriends.

  4. Exhibit C
    Eating disorders expert Margo D. Maine used the concept of “father hunger” in her book Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters and Food (Nov 1991),[24] with particular emphasis on the relationship with the daughter. Such father hunger, as prompted by paternal absence, may leave the daughter with an unhealthy kind of narcissism, and with a prevalent search for external sources of self-esteem.[25] Maine further examined the longing that all children have for connection with fathers, and how an unmet father hunger influences disordered eating and other mental illnesses.
    In contemporary psychoanalytic theory, James M. Herzog’s Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children[26] addresses the unconscious longing experienced by many males and females for an involved father. Also, the importance of fatherly provisions for both sons and daughters during their respective developmental stages is examined in the writings of Michael J. Diamond (see My Father Before Me, WW Norton, 2007).[27]
    Jungians have emphasised the power of parent hunger, forcing one repeatedly to seek out unactualised parts of the father archetype in the outside world.[28] One answer men have been offered is to move into generativity; to find the lost father within themselves, the internal father, and hand him on to their successors,[29] thereby shifting from demanding parental guidance to providing it.[30]

  5. Exhibit D
    https://www.kon.org/urc/v8/goossen.html
    Coming, Muhleman, Johnson, and MacMurry proposed that “girls exposed to a stressful environment, especially when due to father absence in the first 7 years of life, showed an early onset of puberty, precocious sexuality, and unstable relationships as adults” (2002,
    It therefore seems that a father indeed has influence on his daughter and on her development as a whole person. A daughter will be a different kind of person depending on the level of involvement her father has. The question now remains: In what specific ways, or in which areas of life, does a father influence?
    Long-Term Male Romantic Relationships

    It is often said that a daughter is attracted to, or marries, someone just like her father. It appears that this might indeed be the case, or at least a factor, in how a daughter chooses a spouse or a romantic partner. According to a study conducted on college students (both male and female) by Knox, Zusman and DeCuzzi, “offspring whose parents were divorced were more likely to avoid short-term relationships” (2004, ¶ 1). These young women and men are more likely to be more cautious than their peers who have married parents, because they have experienced first hand the pain that results from a broken relationship. Ognibene quoted author Victoria Secunda as saying that the “greatest impact on a woman’s romantic choices and ability to feel comfortable in her own sexuality is how her father related to her in childhood” (1994, ¶ 1). A daughter’s romantic choices will be tainted by the way her father treated her whether she likes it or not. Certain behaviors on his part will trigger her behaviors.

    Further, there have been numerous studies on the negative effects that an absent father has on his daughter’s romantic relationships. Krohn and Bogan summarized them in this way: “numerous studies [indicate] that girls from fatherless families develop more promiscuous attitudes and experience difficulty in forming or maintaining romantic relations later in their development… These behavioral patterns are carried with them into womanhood and may be the cause of their unfulfilling relationships with men” (2001, ¶ 17).

  6. Summary of exhibits:
    The very open and uplifting interview by your daughter Jadia contrasts sharply with your
    STIFF UPPER LIP non disclosure that there are political rifts between the two of you.
    I am concerned about your OPENnESS:
    Agriculture: Are you chasing ambulances like empress Rigobert? What new seed of thought can you share.
    Instead of beating your resume chest , you could have made agricultural ideas of sustainability-even if borrowed from rivals- the Laborie Clarion call.
    You merely gave lip service to pressing issues -in this free golden opportunity provided b the national media.
    As usual flambeau candidates know how to express their narcissism –
    but are empty of basic carpentry skills ar planking the standard for local or national stage of representative governance:
    One kudo for you: No undeserved character assassination of rivals or primitive Troumasse mud slinging or seance to Sir Compton RIP.
    My advice: Avoid the national witch,
    the mouthpiece who snitched on Christ for 30 pieces of silver
    and the self proclaimed occultist Castries MP wannabe Little Richard
    We the people are fed up with ME-MYSELF- AND I political branding
    WE NEED selfless
    Heroic character traits PERIOD!

  7. /
    DASSAULT MIRAGE

    Thanks for the lesson in the after effects of father-daughter relationships, as usual, you always expand and elevate the discussions presented by the writers in this forum by illuminating the topics with scientific data and relevant information, for which people of gratitude are appreciative. Of course you must expect a number of detractors who thrive in darkness preferring the nocturnal life of a “Mab-bwee-ya” or the Crabs that are immobilized on the highways by the headlights, like the Rick John Wayne or a Tom-Tom Peter Josie whose purpose in life is to keep the masses mis-informed by self-hatred and the religion of white supremacy, proclaiming to the world that they are Honorary Whites and “Members of the British Empire” in the infamous company of the Pirates Francis Drake and John Hawkins.

    Here is a sample of the Garbage one finds if he engages in unclogging the septic tank called John Wayne’s frequent masturbation:

    “Ask not who said it first. I cannot be certain, even though I strongly suspect it might be me. If indeed it is, then all the more proof that I am the genius I’ve always known myself to be. (Permit me a minute or two yet again to pat my humble self on the back!) Who said what? Oh, yes, I almost forgot (blame my soothing touch). Here, then, is the line to which humbly I refer: Regardless of what some notorious starry-eyed tartuffes might say to the contrary, still there are times when the best remedy for stress and frustration is to give in to temptation.” – Ricky John Wayne in, “The art of Jerking-Off with Piety & Erectile Dysfunction”.

    This is how such Honorary Whites find humor in the Extra Judicial Murders of Black Lucian men – SICKENING !

    /

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