Chastanet’s Leadership Won The Elections

THE EDITOR:
It appears that every time the St Lucia Labour Party loses an election, it cries foul.

This time, the claim is that the United Workers Party bought votes. Even that clown of a lecturer, Tennyson Joseph, stays on his perch at the University of the West Indies and makes that claim. He too has a problem understanding and accepting the will of the people.

I see the Jamaican pollster Don Anderson making a claim that his poll predicting a Labour Party win was taken two months before and he seems to be telling us that if the elections were held two months earlier Labour would have won.

I do not know what it would take to convince the supporters of the Labour Party that the June 6 election was won by the United Workers Party several months ago; that it was only the extent of the victory that was at issue.

The Labour Party lost the elections because of bad leadership both in the party and in the government and a string of wrong decisions taken, including the calculated attempt to destroy the spirit of one man, Allen Chastanet, who kept his cool, did his work and won the victory.

I heard Kendall Burton reading an item on DBS quoting people as saying that people voted against the government not for the opposition and one wonders why media reporters are allowed to jump to such conclusions without proof. Should not DBS have told us which people and how many of them were making that claim?

Ever since the march against gas prices in March 2015, it was clear that Chastanet was emerging as a leader.

By getting the dissidents out of the party including the pompous Tori Fatal and closing ranks with his opponents, Chastanet solidified his position even more. And then he made the party’s internal organs stronger. He refused to engage Kenny Anthony in a verbal brawl and stayed focused. In the final weeks of the campaign when Chastanet began to articulate his vision for the country, it was clear that his stock as a leader had grown ten fold. That is what St Lucians voted for.

So if Labour cannot accept it, too bad for them.

– Peterson Demille