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To Be or Not To Be!

Image of Kensley Peter Charlemange
Image of Kensley Peter Charlemange
Independent Eye by Kensley Peter Charlemange

SOMEONE said to me that Saint Lucia’s biggest problem is that we have a Prime Minister who is helter skelter in his decision-making. I countered that our biggest problem is that we have a people who cannot stand together to demand his removal. But then again it does not have to take the people to cause a prime ministerial change.

All we need are three persons on the government side to get with the Opposition and pass a vote of no confidence in the sitting Prime Minister or any coalition of 9 (it can be 9 from the ruling side). The equation is simple. What is difficult is getting some money-hungry politicians to place what is in the interest of the country over what is in the best interest of their pockets.

Some problems keep raising their heads over and over again in our governmental system. I watched a television panel discussion on constitutional reform moderated by Kim St Rose. On the panel were Andy Daniel, Philip Pierre and Allen Chastanet. The group dynamics and behaviour were a study in themselves. The discussion was intriguing, though.

It was one of the best performances by the Prime Minister that I have witnessed. Apart from him avoiding many of the questions and him stating that we need to hire CEOs in government, I think that a lot of his arguments were substantial. The one impression that I left with from viewing the show was that if we have to wait on politicians for constitutional reform, it is never going to happen. And we must never do it in a piecemeal approach. That was a point that Andy Daniel was trying g to drive home.

Undertaking constitutional reform in a piecemeal approach is like reducing VAT little by little. Constitutional reform will only happen when the people stand together to demand it but I am not holding my breath. Party politics have stagnated our progress and that cancer needs some serious chemotherapy. But the truth is that our minds have been poisoned. We have been brutally divided as a people and I honestly do not know what will unite us. I really thought DSH would.

Our people do not see that giving control of so much of our land into the hands of one man is selling us right back into slavery. All that glitters is not gold. They do it to us at election time and they are doing it to us again. They are blinding us with the glitters of high-rise buildings and the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs for chump change in our pockets. Pay no mind to the displacement that this investment will cause. Pay no mind to the ecological disaster we are about to create. Pay no mind to the social headaches that this will cause. Focus on money in our pockets. But what money? Money has not solved the world’s problems and it won’t start now.

3 Comments

  1. Kensley

    Your writing tells me, you are not focus and you did not pay attention to the panel composition or the true content of the discussions. If you did, there was no Andy Daniel. A focus Kensley, would have seen Andie George and would have also noticed, how terrible Phillip responded to simple questions. Keep real….

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