The Declaration of a Dying Politician

As usual before I begin any one of my literary pieces I am always gripped by the terror of the blank page. but after a while the terror subsides and a certain calmness of thought and experience soothes the palpitation of my heart. the brain is now engaged and a smile of expectation and anticipation emerges from within.

To put all of what i have to say in their correct perspective, chronologically and otherwise and to give you an insight into the quality of mind that has authored these items of thought and accomplishments, i have decided to append to this narration my curriculum vitae. it certainly is not the story of my life in whatever form since it does not encompass my doings and undoing’s. the latter is indeed a life of its own.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

VELON LEO JOHN – BA, MCA, LLB, LLM, CLE, PhD, OBE, SLC.

Barrister &Solicitor & Notary Royal & Notary Public

(Member of the Bars of Ontario / Canada, Dominica and St. Lucia)

EDUCATION:

The Alcess Kindergarten School –   LABORIE

The St. Anthony Infant School – LABORIE (The Medouse Sisters)

The Laborie Boys Primary School – LABORIE (Vincent Glasgow)

The Anglican Primary School – CASTRIES (Lester Vaughn)

St. Mary’s College – CASTRIES (Bro. Canice Collins)

St. Francis Xavier University – Antigonish, Nova Scotia, CANADA, Bachelor of Arts in Sociology & Philosophy

Ottawa University, Ottawa, CANADA – Masters in Applied Criminology

Ottawa University – Bachelor of Laws

Miami University, Coral Gables, Miami, Florida, USA – Masters of Laws in International Law specializing | In the Law of the Sea.

The University of the West Indies , Trinidad, West Indies – Certificate of Legal Education

The University of Cape Town, South Africa, AFRICA – Public Senior Executive Seminar

The Atlantic International University, Hawaii, USA.

Georgetown University, Washington, USA. – (Seminar in Transnational Crime)

St. Francis Xavier University 

1. President of the S. F X U Debating Society  (2 years)
2. President of the Caribbean Society (1 year)
3. Prefect of the Burke and Plessis Residencies.
4. Member of the Student Disciplinary Society.
5. Chairman of the Sisters Appreciation Committee.
6. Writer for the XAVARIAN WEEKLY ( 3 years)
7. Cultural Editor for the St. F.X.U. YEAR BOOK (1 year).
8. Varsity Soccer and Fencing Player  (3 years))
9. Maritime Fencing Champion – epee (1968)

AWARDS – St. FXU.

1. Golden “X” Certificate for outstanding contribution to the University and Student Body.
2. Golden “X” for Inter Collegiate Debating Proficiency.
3. Award for outstanding contribution to the St. F.X.U. Debating Society.
4. Award for Fencing Champion
5. Nominated for the Meech Award as the most outstanding Freshman.

OTTAWA UNIVERSITY 

1. Organiser of Campus-wide Forensic Tournament (1971)
2. In conjunction with Dr. / Professor C.H.S. Jayewardene organised campus wide Drus Symposium.
3. Research Assistant to Dr. Jayewardene (Professor of Criminology).
4. Editor of the Ottawa University Law School Newspaper – THE CAVEAT (1974).

MIAMI UNIVERSITY

1. Member of the Foreign Student Law School Society (1984)

Some Places Worked: (Canada)

1. Two Training School for Boys: Bowmanville and Cobourg cities.
2. Solicitor General Department in Ottawa
3. CIL Paints as a Garbage man and later as an Assistant in the Laboratory.
4. Student-at-Law at the firm of Hendin & Hendin. (1975-76).
5. Barrister & Solicitor: Sole Practitioner in Toronto, Ontario-1976-1980).

(Saint Lucia)

1. Magistrate of the First and District Court (1981-1985).
2. Magistrate of the First and District Court (2011-13).
3. Senior Magistrate in the British Virgin Islands 2013.
4. The Government Public Service.

• • Parliamentarian for approximately seventeen (17) years
  • Magistrate for the First and District Courts – (1981-1985)
  • Senator
  • Member of Her Majesty Loyal Opposition (1992-1997)
  • Minister of Home Affairs, Legal Affairs & Labour – (1997-2001).
  • Minister of the Public Service, Co-operatives and Labour – (2001-2006).

PUBLICATIONS

1. Legal Advertising: A Matter of Ethics in the Gazette (Law Society of Upper Canada: Volume x1 September, 1977).
2. Legal Perceptions: The Lawyer and his Mistress in the Gazette (Law Society of Upper Canada – Volume X111 September, 1979).
3. The Legal System of St. Lucia in MODERNM LEGAL CYCLOPEDIA volume 7: Published by William S. Hein & Co. Ltd., Buffalo, New York, 198.
4. RAMBLINGS OF A MIND – October 1999.

POSITIONS  HELD  (some)

1. Barrister and Solicitor and Notary Royal (Canada) 1976-1980
2. President of the St. Lucia Toronto Association (1979).
3. Co-founder of the St. Lucia Ottawa Association (1980).
4. Member of the Lions Club (1979) Toronto, Canada.
5. Member of the Board of Directors of the Black Resources Information Centre (1979-1980).
6. Member of the Executive Committee of the Rogest Delas Law Association (1979-1980) Toronto, Canada.
7. Member of the Christian Business Men Committee (1978-80), Toronto, Ontario.
8. Member of St. Mary’s College Board of Management (1982-85).
9. President and Founder of the Friends of the Golden Hope Society of the Golden Hope Mental Hospital (1982-85) Castries, St. Lucia.
10. Barrister and Solicitor (1976 -1980) Canada and 1986.
11. Member of the Senate (1992).
12. Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the House of
13. Minister of Legal Affairs, Home Affairs & Labour. (1997-2001).
14. Minister of the Public Service, Co-operatives and Labour (2001-2006).

PUBLIC CITATION

1. Order of the British Empire – OBE.
2. Lucia Cross – SLC.

NOTA BENE: 

The Conceptualization, Execution, Commission and Naming of the Rudy John Beach Park in the Laborie constituency were done/effectuated by Me.

Dr. Velon Leo John
10^th October, 2022.

velon.leo@gmail.com  (Email address)

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Now that you have perused my CV and a glimmer of enlightenment has pervaded your being I will now reiterate a statement made at an earlier date.

I am a Scrambler of words

A mad leaper to a star.

An un-feathered biped with a Soul that contradicts.

The concoction is madness.

And it is within this cocoon of thought and practice that I have sublimely and existentially emerged as a humanist and mundanely and practically a politician. Obviously and commonsensically the first takes precedence and directs and guides the course of my political exertions and postures.

And it was from this mindset, that when not given the entitled RESPECTFUL and deserving opportunity to address the SAINT LUCIA CONVENTION OF DEFEGATES, BELLEVUE, VIEUX FORT (2024) that I wrote this planned or intended address.

BELLEVUE 2024:

Heart-felt salutations to my Brothers and Sisters of the Labour fraternity.

GOOD AFTERNOON

It affords me the greatest pleasure to address you, not as a politician, but as a humanist, as I have always been.

The former is acquisitive and opportunistic while the latter is existential and necessarily ethical. However one is not diametrically opposed to the other. They can functionally and salubriously be juxtaposed with each other; but in the arena of life one perceives areas of conflict that make a mockery of the values allegedly extolled by the practitioners of the political art.

Politics is about Power. That is the fundamental operational posture. But then what needs to be realized is that not every political problem has a solution that involves the exercise of power. And it is in this context that you the practitioners of the art of politics must go searching for your intrinsic, immanent, humanity.

For it is the management of this dichotomy and dualism that gives politics a human face and establishes the nexus between morality and philosophy. Your modus operandi and modus vivendi should exist in a common humanitarian cause that constitutes the justification of your political cause. And that common cause must be all embracing in its humanity and in which you must lose yourself in order to find your political self.

And that self must be ethical in its doings and should always hold on to the truth of things. For the Truth is that which defines and distinguishes you from those who are   opposed to you in their scatological political bablements and fatuous remarks.

Your embrace of the Truth does not mean that in your world there is no propaganda. There will always be: for propaganda and truth co-exist since propaganda is indeed the Truth from a different vantage or perspective. For example:

This man will do A, B and C; and X will call him a freedom fighter. This very same man will do A, B and C but Y will call him a terrorist.

What is opposite to the Truth is a Lie: what is diametrically opposed to the truth is a falsification. The antithesis to the Truth is a lie. And that is where Morality and Immorality grotesquely embrace in the arena of politics.

To our young and aspiring politicians I say this:  The Truth should be what defines and distinguishes you. And in this world of ours which is replete with blatant lies, disinformation, misinformation, speaking the Truth takes courage. And what should be normal, natural, prosaic now becomes a revolutionary act.  And it is this revolutionary act in its collectivity that will enable you in your political doings that will enable to aspire not for perfection but for progress. And if you are true to yourself and to your people there will be progress; because an essential element in this equation of progress is TRUST. There must be trust between you and yourself:  there must be trust between you and your people for they constitute the raison d’etre of your political existence. And all of what you achieve for them is through them.

Once you embark on this ship of politics you are not alone: you are never alone. And what comes to mind at this time is the poem of John Donne in his verse Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, where he says:

“No man is an island entire of itself 

Every man’s death diminishes me

Because I am involved in mankind

And never send to know for whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee.”

And for you young and aspiring politicians once you are in politics microcosmically you are involved in mankind in its existential holistic struggles. The evolution of mankind is indeed a function of the progress that you make or achieve.

And that is what our people in Banse, La Grace, La Hoe, Valier, Maganier, Augier, Laborie need to see, to feel, to hear: Progress in its various forms, in the various dimensions of their lives.

And indeed I am elated to report to you that this your government, under the leadership of the Hon. Philip J. Pierre has defined and is defining itself by just one word: PROGRESS. THREE AND A HALF YEARS OF PROGRESS.

And whether you know it or not, it has not been easy. It has been a struggle between the TRUTH of your government and the Lies of the United Wreckers of the Poor. And this brings to mind the words of Barack Obama in his book DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. And he says, with a slight but significant change by me, the following:

There is a struggle going on: it is happening an ocean away. But it is a struggle that touches each and every one of us whether we know it or not.

A struggle that demands we choose sides:

Not between black and white:

Not between red and yellow:

Not between rich and poor.

NO! It is a harder choice than that.

It is a choice between dignity and servitude:

Between TRUTH and Falsity:

Between Fairness and Injustice:

Between Honesty and Corruption:

Between Commitment and Indifference: Yes, Indeed,

A choice between that which is RIGHT and that which is Wrong.

Yes ma my Labour: That is your choice. A choice between that which is Right and that which is Wrong.

And this is what you have to do in approximately two years time. You must make that choice between that which is right and that which is wrong. But that choice, your choice, cannot be effectuated in a vacuum. It has to be contextualized in space and in time in a relevant and political arena of achievements. And in this arena are the two participating actors: the United Workers Party and the St. Lucia Labour Party.

Prior to this Government and for five years plus, the UWP governed this country: and in terms of their choices of what is right for St. Lucia and its people there is no evidentiary support.  What is evident is a catalogue of sins of commission and omission. What I see are choices for what is wrong. And some of those are, the following:

1. Failure to convene Parliament within one month of the date of general elections, as required by the constitution. That was wrong.

2. Being the most corrupt government according to the Corrupt Perception Index for that period of time: that was wrong.

3. Being the worst ranking in the Ease of doing Business for that period: that was wrong.

4. Having the highest number of murders for that time; that was wrong.

5. Having the lowest government bond rating for that period: that was wrong.

6. Having the highest debt to GDP Ratio for that period: that was wrong.

7. Creating a PAJAOH letter incident and scandal: That was wrong.

8. Failure to construct a Sports Academy as promised: That was wrong.

9. Failure to complete one capital project including a hotel for that period; that was wrong.

10. Orchestrating a failed Range Development project: that was wrong.

11. Orchestrating the dissolution of WINFRESH:  that was wrong.

12. Getting St. Lucia on the EU black list at that time: that was wrong.

13. Closure of Radio St. Lucia:  that was wrong.

14. Closure of the Fisheries Complex at that time: that was wrong.

15. Closure of the Marketing Board: that was wrong.

16. Failure to complete the reconstruction of St. Jude Hospital:  that was wrong.

17. Stopping the Dennery Wind Farm project:  that was wrong

18. Failure to export our bananas to France and Martinique: that was wrong.

I will stop here: but others can continue.

Indeed there is a choice to be made in our world of politics: a choice between that which is right and that which is wrong.

A choice between Truth and Falsity: a choice between Honesty and Corruption: a choice between fairness and injustice: and a choice between the welfare of the people and self, personal aggrandizement.

And for three and a half years, this your government, this your Prime Minister and his Cabinet chose the former. They chose TRUTH, FAIRNESS, HONESTY and the WELFARE OF THE PEOPLE.

And the posture consequentially assumed has been translated into those salubriously legislated policies of action. And they are:

1. The National Minimum Wage.
2. The Insolvency Act.
3. Three consecutive years of Economic growth over 3%.
4. The Best Economy in the Region.
5. Government pension increased to $725.00
6. Lap top programme restored.
7. Custody Suites being rebuilt.
8. Tax reprieve introduced.
9. The almost completion of St. Jude Hospital.
10. Free homes to some of our indigent
11. Mon REPOS cemetery being addressed.
12. Micoud Village Jetty completed.
13. NHC has its own building for the first time.
14. The Unemployment rate the lowest in the past 11 years.
15. LIAT workers paid at last.
16. Majestic workers paid at last
17. The Halls of Justice has just begun
18. The A new HRDC constructed in Grand Riviere.

Brothers and Sisters I could continue on this pilgrimage of that which is right almost forever, but I will not.  Your government is doing the right thing, and your government is on the right path.

And finally, among the plethora of matters that are Right, among the choices and decisions that are right, among the postures and postulations that are right, it is indeed right that at this time in the reign of the St. Lucia Labour Party, and under the governance of its Cabinet of Ministers, JULIEN ALFRED has emerged as The OLYMPIC WARRIOR QUEEN OF SAINT LUCIA and the WORLD.

And like the Saint Lucia Labour Party they are both on the RIGHT PATH.

MA MI Labour Merci

Thank you Brother & Sisters

Thank You Comrades of the Star.

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THE GENESIS:

Having graduated from the LAW SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA and having  been called to the BAR OF ONTARIO  in 1975 I entered into private practice in Toronto as a Canadian  Barrister, Solicitor and Notary Royal.

In 1981 I returned to my island home, Saint Lucia and there I was appointed as a Magistrate to the First and Second District Courts. About 1986 I resigned from the Bench. A flogging at the then Columbus Square, which did not take place, had become a judicial/national issue. I then proceeded to the UNIVERSTY OF THE WEST INDIES in TRINIDAD to qualify myself as an ENGLISH BARRISTER AND SOLICITOR. During my sojourn at the said University I was invited by Sir Julian Hunte to participate in a coming General Election and to contest the Castries Central Constituency against the Hon. George W. Mallet the incumbent. I had a few weeks to campaign. I accepted Sr. Hunte’s invitation. That was my first sacrifice for the Labour Party. I lost, but as fate would have, Prime Minister John Compton called a second General Election in that very same month. Again I was invited to contest the same seat. Again I accepted Julian’s invitation. My second sacrifice for the Labour Party. The formidable Hon. Mallet remained unbeaten.

Almost at the beginning of the electoral term and with me holding on to the Castries Central Seat with no locus standi, Hon. Neville Cenac, the Labour incumbent for the Laborie Constituency, decided to cross the floor and join the ranks of the United Workers party as the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the UWP government. I was then invited by Sir to forgo Central Castries and situate my political life in the Laborie Constituency. Again I accepted; that was my third sacrifice for the Labour Party. To put all of this in its perspective, it is to be noted that my home and family was in Castries and that I now had to service a constituency to the South of the island,

Having accepted I was now the de facto Labour Representative for the Labour Party in Laborie with virtually no locus standi. And so for almost five years I worked that constituency while residing in Castries with my family. That was hard. But my travails were vindicated when I won the next election and so became the de jure representative for the Labour Party in Laborie. That was in1992.I was now a member of her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

If I can correctly it was during the period of a denuded political operative that I was made a Senator under the Presidency of Henry Giraudy. While in OPPOSITION I did emerge for some time as Leader of Opposition in the House of Parliament. For my second term as a parliamentarian and having won the 1997 election and now in Government I was then made a Minister holding the Portfolios of Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Legal Affairs and minister of Labour. For my third and consecutive as a parliamentarian I was then made minister of the Public Service, Minister of Cooperatives and Minister of Labour. At the end of that electoral term I retired from electoral politics.

In my time the life of a politician was very arduous and very demanding. And that difficulty was compounded by the dreaded fact that I had to serve that constituency with my family and home resident in Castries. AND THIS I did for about twenty years. The condition of the roads was an abomination and the maintenance cost to vehicles was frightening. The life was hard; but in a rather abstruse manner I enjoyed it. Getting to meet and to know my people from the various rural communities was sheer joy and endeavouring to meet their well-deserved needs provided a satisfaction beyond compare. Water at Majomel, electricity at Maganier, Valier and Coeur Noissuer, footpaths here and there, road repairs and the lot.

I accomplished a lot for Laborie, but with a “certain help” much more could have been accomplished. The absence of that “certain help” is a profound regret. However I am satisfied that for the greater part the rural electrification of Laborie can be attributed to me.  In all of its aspects the RUDY JOHN BEACH PARK is my vision, my creation, my handiwork, And in the process of so doing I conferred a certain “immortality” upon this gentle icon of the LAB.

Having retired from electoral politics I returned to private practice, but then I was always available  to serve my government  and my people. That availability was never capitalized upon by succeeding Labour administrations. Many positions were available but for whatever the reason I was never called upon to serve. For example, BOARD MEMBER, HIGH COMMISSIONER TO THE UNITED KINGDOM, MARITIME REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UK (Juvali), DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVE to CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES, UNITED NATIONS REPRESENTATIVE (twice) and so forth. As I see it I was both qualified and entitled for those positions. And my being awarded the SAINT LUCIA CROSS (SLC) in the considered areas of LAW, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT and PUBLIC SERVICE attests to my qualification and my entitlement.

It further is to be noted that during my post retirement period I was invited to be the Senior Magistrate in the British Virgin Islands; my sojourn in TORTOLA was most exhilarating and productive.

At this time it seems that my life’s journey is coming to an end but with a certain omission; a certain entitlement thwarted. And that is the PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SAINT LUCIA. But that does not seem to have been one of the cards of my life.

In rerum natura est: it is in the nature of things.

At this time it would be remiss of me if I did not recognize those who played an indispensable part in my Laborie adventure, They are my Indian friend of Augier  HARRY (PaP); GARTH and MATHUEL of the village  and WAPSONIA of High Road. In deed they were stalwarts in their magnificent humility.

With Death comes a certain Acceptance, a Certain Resignation and a certain joyous Peace. I have that PEACE.