You Don’t Miss The Water Till The Well Runs Dry

SOME people’s mentality is “anything for money”, a lot like the demagogy of politicians who would say anything to win an election. “Let’s make Saint Lucia great again.” “We will within the first hundred days in office, effect a reduction in VAT toward its eventual elimination.”

The politicians we love are not those who speak to reason but those who stir our emotional chords, and make us dance their dance outside of any correct thinking. And so when UWP won the election you would have thought that would have meant the salvation of Sabwicha. The people we elect into office are those who have no passion for the protection of the environment and its conservation. They are the ones who could not send a resounding message on reparations to the Queen of England while the Prince was here watching the subject fall at his feet. These are the people who would blow off the summit of the Pitons to put cable zip lines for the satisfaction of the tourists. They are the ones who would destroy Fregate Island, a natural reserve and learning resource for our children for touristic development. These are the people who have no appreciation for our ancestral history and artifacts, the same who would sell out our beaches to oligarchy, who have no respect or sensitivity to our way of life or our history. They are the people who would do anything to stay in power.

You hear a lot of rubbish on the campaign trail such as building a bigger ghetto in the ghetto, or factories in Sabwicha. The politicians know how to appease us but telling us that the mangroves are now out of the 700 acres DSH development in Vieux Fort. They appease us by telling us that they are having community discussions but those meetings are under publicized. They would build a monstrosity in Cap Estate, which seems to be a disgust to many of the residents. They promise us a hotel development in Belvedere all in the name of jobs, jobs, jobs. So we are losing much of our agricultural lands to touristic development and that’s a okay. And so the very thing, the natural beauty of Saint Lucia, for which the tourists come in the first place, we are quickly destroying.

But the problem is not politicians but the uneducated populace who think that they are living in a democracy when they’re not. We are immobilized as a society when there is a restriction placed on the very foundation that makes democracy work. Having to go to the police to get permission to hold a demonstration of any kind is detrimental to a vibrant democracy and is a restriction that should never be in place if we are serious about advancing “this democracy”. But I have digressed.

In Saint Lucia we continue to complain in silence. There are many people in Choiseul and beyond who are opposed to the Sunset Bay Resort but do you hear their voices? Saint Lucia is up for sale and going cheap. There is a reason why children of today leave school unable to read. We perpetuated the ignorance so that the despotic among us continue to rule. But we may never miss the beauty of Saint Lucia until all our land is sold to foreigners, until all our sandy beaches are over-taken by hotels, until all our women are slaves to expatriates and all our men are butlers and bell boys at some all inclusive luxury resort in a place we can no longer call our own.