Letters & Opinion

Soul of a Nation – Pt.1

Image of David Prescod
By David Prescod

SOMEBODY tiefing the soul ah mih nation
Somebody gone with the morals of this land
Somebody tiefing the soul ah mih nation
Somebody causing much too much frustration
And we, yes, you and me, we have to stop this conspiracy.
A chorus from “Soul of a Nation” by Trinidadian Calypsonian “Gypsy” (1999)

Nearly twenty years ago Gypsy spoke to us eloquently of the growing scourges of drug addiction, prostitution, teenage pregnancy and the increasing incidence of the rape of women in his homeland, Trinidad & Tobago, and pointed to the reason for this. According to him that reason was: “Politics for one and politicians for the other.” Nobody listened, and today we know the result – those scourges now threaten to overwhelm Trinidadian society.

Gypsy starts his calypso with the line:
“You see that a nation without a soul is like a ship that has lost its rudder”, and tells us in the penultimate verse:
“Work ethics keep on going down the drain
Young people today say they ent working again …
We morals and we money gone
We don’t know wey it went
This can never be happening by accident”.

Individually, we like to think of ourselves as being omniscient – we know it all. We ignore our calypsonians and we ignore our academics until one day we are forced to face the reaAlity which they warned us that our future would hold. Then, and only then, we re-invent the same wheel which has taken us down this dreaded path and proclaim our genius to ourselves, while in reality doing nothing new. Politicians do this best, and they provide an easy target for finger-pointing. But the fault does not lie with the politician; it lies with us. We must listen to our calypsonians.

The issue of the high rates of un-employment of our people has been around for a long time, and there are some things that you don’t forget. One of those happens to be correspondence to this newspaper about twenty-five years ago, by a well-known St. Lucian technocrat, in which he advocated that a solution to our un-employment problem would be for us to export our human resource. Fine idea, was my initial reaction, until it dawned on me that the persons who he planned on exporting were you and me – he, intended to stay.

In making that recommendation however, the technocrat in question was not ill-intentioned, but was only doing what technocrats do best. Faced with a problem, he had come up with a technical solution to it but had given little consideration to the wider impact which that solution would have on society. For that, we require a filter of decision makers, and to that end we appoint a group of politicians every five years. These are the persons who are supposed to man that rudder which Gypsy spoke about, and the persons expected to safeguard the nation’s soul.

But we are in trouble, our rudder is broken, and the Citizenship by Investment Programme and the projects which it has spawned provide clear evidence of this. In particular, the Desert Star Project proposed for Vieux Fort demonstrates the absurdity of the current approach to our development, and we will address this in a subsequent article. I have opposed and objected to this sale of our identity from the outset, and have repeatedly provided the reasons for this opposition. First and foremost, it is demeaning to us as a people, and so let me again quote former Prime Minister Anthony under whose administration both the CIP and the Desert Star project were conceived:

“Truth be told, I firmly believe that citizenship should always be a statement of national pride and an expression of national sovereignty”.

That is also my belief, and the belief of the majority of us, but that belief no longer counts, and our citizenship no longer has meaning.

Then, we have described these so-called “developers” who are being attracted to this CIP scheme, lured in effect by the risk-free money made available to them by the sale of our passports. We have also pointed out that when an agency of government proclaimed a resurgence of investor confidence in our economy based on projects proposed under the CIP, nothing could have been further from the truth as the supposed “investors” were simply buying a passport for their convenience and their interest in St. Lucia had nothing to do with the state of our economy.

Now, we have the spiel originating from the other side of the mouth of this same agency that the developer for this horse-racing project in Vieux Fort is so confident in St. Lucia that he is prepared to invest his own money up-front so as to construct the “horse racing track”. Mind you, just the “horse racing track” is to be constructed, but this allows this agency to announce that the sale of our passports will now “help to finance” this US$2.6bn project (St. Lucia Times, November 29, 2015). Maybe that official would be kind enough to let us know exactly how much of his own money the “developer” intends to invest in that track, and for how long he intends to maintain that investment?

That is what technocrats do – assemble the facts and present them in the most favorable light in furtherance of the solutions which they propose. But when I listened to our Prime Minister sometime in October/November of last year explaining that the CIP was being revamped and that the success of these CIP programmes now really depended on the cooperation of the countries engaged in this activity, my first reaction was that all logic had flown the coop and that the inmates were now running this asylum.

This region has a long and tragic history of the lack of cooperation by the leaders of our countries when faced with noble objectives important to the people of the region such as the Caribbean Court of Justice, LIAT, and the marketing of the region as a single tourism destination. How on earth then does our Prime Minister intend to convince these same leaders, who have now discovered a route to quick cash without having to work for it, that it would be best for everyone engaged in these passport-selling schemes if they cooperated and avoided competition with each other?

While my first reaction therefore was that there was no sense to the Prime Minister’s statement, there is however a possible underlying, but perverse logic to it. This passport-selling scheme cannot have arisen from the vision for the holistic development of our country of either our current Prime Minister or our immediately preceding Prime Minister, as it completely ignores the issues of nationalism and the damage that will be inflicted on our societal structures and values by this practice.

In fact, we were told in the initial report presenting the CIP that nationalism was now an outdated concept in the new global environment, and that we were now global citizens. Current events in both Europe and the United States will presumably lead to a revision of that advice, but the damage has already been done.

The advice which is driving this thrust to the sale of our passports in the face of all objection could therefore only be coming from our technocrats, that cold-blooded group of persons whose only companion is the calculator, and whose only concept of success is the size of the “investment” made irregardless of the human cost. They are ably supported by other professionals, and these technocrats do not all necessarily reside in the public sector.

But they miscalculate. They assume that having forced this CIP down our throats we are now going to accept it. To make it go down a little easier, they promise to revise it and then invite us to a public consultation without once publishing in advance the changes that they propose to the scheme. Fait accompli and token consultation held, rather than publish the changes and discussions arising from this staged consultation they instead publish notification of the number of our passports that have been sold. Then, on a holiday over the New Year’s celebration, they publish revised Regulations to the CIP Act.

We will not accept it. We have fought too long and too hard to reclaim our identity, and we will continue to object at every instance that its sale arises. There will be no retreat.

And we would like to draw to the attention of the Prime Minister that his new job does not only entail the working of economic miracles in a day, but that he is, even more importantly now, responsible for restoring the soul of this nation. That is Gypsy’s message.

“Somebody tiefing the soul of this nation, and we, yes you and me, we have to stop this conspiracy.”

This is the first of a three part series, and for the next few weeks we take a look at ourselves. Then we examine Desert Star Holdings.

I would also like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere condolences to the family of the late Sir Dwight Venner, and to express my deep gratitude for the service and leadership which Sir Dwight so graciously provided us. Thank you, Sir Dwight.

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