I wanted to offer a full 2023 Review on this the first weekend of 2024, but even my best editing skills won’t allow the words to fit this space.
I was also both constrained and restrained by the fact that the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP)’s mid-term will be observed on January 21, when the measurements, by various yardsticks, will be over its first of two two-and-a-half-year periods, instead of the past 12 months.
I decided to just concentrate on Last Year’s Last Quarter and for this exercise I chose to only highlight headlines of government-supplied news items the local media chose to give headline coverage.
Between October 1 and December 31, 2023, Saint Lucians absorbed the following 12 headlines (in that order):
• Ambulance Fees Abolished
• COVID Vaccine Audit Completed
• $10 Million spent on Security at Bordelais Correction Facility
• More Money for Pensioners
• Sod turned for $35 Million Northern Division Police Headquarters
• Plans Unveiled for New House of Justice
• Over $268 Million in Revenues from Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP)
• Special Prosecutor Finally Approved
• National Reparations Consultation Launched
• Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to Review Millennium Highway Project
• Government to Payout over $40 million in outstanding tax refunds
• Commerce Ministry hosts public consultation on Inflation
In the nine months preceding the above 12 weekly headlines (and many others), the SLP administration continued delivering on its 2021 elections campaign promises, at every sitting of the House of Assembly.
Saint Lucians, as per usual, quickly settled into the comfort of expecting the Philip J. Pierre administration to simply continue to deliver on its promises and to take actions in keeping with its motto of ‘Putting People First’.
Naturally, a perplexed opposition, dazzled by the actual shine of this administration’s monthly parliamentary accounts of its stewardship, has opted to do the next best thing: oppose for opposing sake, encouraging members to uselessly holler on highways and pound pavements, even calling for new elections after two years, while accumulating unproven claims and allegations of corruption against the Prime Minister – and increasingly relying on invisible online support to replace visible and voting foot soldiers.
Limping on two feet in the same shoe in the House of Assembly, the UWP’s two MPs continues to hop-skip-and-jump from issue to issue with predictable (opposition) positions, never mind the accumulation, since July 2021, by this administration, of the multitudes of its comparable political sins of commission and omission chalked-up between 2016 and 2021.
One won’t accuse the last UWP administration of committing Mortal Sin, but it would probably take a Mortal Kombat to finish tabulating, far-less start seeking or offering penance, without confession and the accompanying ‘Through My Fault…’ admission – three times in the square of public opinion, if not also in the global public square.
The previous administration left a patented historical record, including: the last PM’s signature denial of having signed the Desert Star Holdings (DSH) agreement, failure to deliver on many (if any) of the promised DSH deliverables, refusal to make statutory annual public disclosures about sale of local citizenship abroad through the CIP — and the growing list of still-unanswered questions associated with major projects like St. Jude Hospital, Hewanorra International Airport (HIA), the Millennium and Castries-Gros Islet Highways, pre-2021 General Election contracts and payments for works either undelivered or not (yet) seen.
That was yesterday and yesteryear, so what about tomorrow, next year and the future?
It’s difficult, though not impossible, to imagine what this prime minister will do next, but if Philip J. Pierre is to be measured by his performance, even his strongest critics, in rare moments of honesty, will only differ on how-high his pass marks should be.
None will give him 100%, but any who’d dare give him anything above 50% will most-likely be fingered and treated like a traitor, simply for daring to hate a dog, but admit its teeth are white.
PM Pierre is no longer openly referred to as a ‘little black boy from Marchand’, but his shadowy arch-critics continue to work overtime to paint him as who he isn’t, simply refusing to admit they’ve failed miserably to pin any corruption tag on him, instead targeting ‘those around him’ – their favorite pin cushions.
Any ruling party and administration approaching the end of its first mid-term will look back before ahead, so it can be expected that the SLP will have by now examined its delivery and accomplishments records, as well as those areas where the government may have lapsed in the pace of delivery — and in public response to its achievements and non-achievements.
Every leader of a ruling party and government at mid-term in its first term will also sit at the head of the table and examine every elected member and cabinet minister with clockwork and clinical assessment, with a view to assessing their performances and determine how (and where) best they’ll function in the second half.
Winning a second or the next term is a natural objective of every ruling party and history is replete with examples of leaders undertaking Cabinet changes to strengthen delivery possibilities and enhance popular support for ongoing programmes that continue to keep and earn votes, not based on buying but on people’s genuine appreciation of the government’s performance.
However, Cabinet reshuffle or not, all governments in the place of the current SLP-led administration will also (by now) have come-up with a long list of remaining promises and new deliverables for the second half of its term, which list will naturally be trimmed to annual budget cycles and adjusted according to unpredictable variables.
After delivering to pensioners and taxpayers for Christmas, the government is currently preparing its first mid-term Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
But even before the next national budget is presented, it can be said, as of today, that this administration’s delivery record has been impeccable – and by-far – especially when compared the preceding one.
That’s pretty tough for a tiny Island to have to spend $10 million of its revenue on the Bordelais correctional facility to house inmates, most of them have been in and out of there many times over; there must be some alternate solution to the constant flow of this system; I was thinking of the introduction of some ‘whip ass’ by some masked individual (not the same one at all times) to be carried out, preferably at the location where the crime was carried out. I think after some 10 to 15 lashes on first occurrence, then either let free or be returned to Prison to serve some given sentence.
On another note, I think the system of ‘Citizenship by investment’ is a dumb way of raising Currency by any Government and it should be stopped immediately. This is a small Island and the recipients of such a system don’t always apply for or use this system for the purpose of investment, but in danger of its use for nefarious reasons. Since as stated that $268million in revenue have been received, inquiring minds would like to know how has this currency if any, has been disposed of and for what – just asking.