Let’s be clear about this. Political Parties (and candidates), especially around election time(s), desperately want your vote. Why? To win, of course! Their campaign, actions designed to get your vote, is centered on influencing your decision. How do they do that? They engage in public meetings, radio and television talk shows, whistle stops, house-to-house canvassing, and special ‘optics’. What are optics? Optics are the actions of politicians and the perception voters have of such actions. Those actions don’t necessarily need an explanation-they often ‘speak’ for themselves.
During campaigns, governing Parties promote or defend their accomplishments in office. Opposition Parties, on the other hand, attack the government’s record while promising to do more or better. In recent times, political Parties have recognized the value of, and used, various optics to communicate their message(s) to voters. Good or bad, those actions tell voters whether Parties and candidates are genuine in their pronouncements or whether they’re just being downright deceitful.
To put this issue into some context or perspective, let us look at the optics of three opposition candidates.
Guy Joseph, UWP candidate for the constituency of Castries Southeast, recently told an audience of UWP supporters (during a televised meeting) that he and his Party’s candidates are “Christian conservatives”. There was absolutely no doubt he was making a pitch at religious groups or members of various religious denominations. To make his message even clearer, he said that no Christian should even consider voting for candidates of the SLP in the upcoming elections because of their “wickedness”. But, in the last campaign preceding the 2016 elections, “Christian conservative” Guy Joseph spread a rumour that his then-opponent, Joachim Henry, had sacrificed his son (who had died a short time before) to the devil to win the Castries Southeast seat. And in more recent times, he imputed that Education Minister, Shawn Edward, has a sexual interest in secondary school girls because the Ministry of Education would be supervising the Government’s provision for sanitary napkins to be made available to secondary schools, to alleviate the incidents of period poverty in Saint Lucia.
Allen Chastanet, political leader of the UWP, rides around seated in the cargo area of light trucks, eats fried chicken by the roadside, and hey, would you believe it, plays marbles with kids. This is all carefully choreographed, with media people on hand, of course, to show a lighter side of the former Prime Minister who referred to Saint Lucians as ‘barking dogs’, ‘mendicants’, and ‘jackasses’, while portraying himself as ‘…a product of Canada.’
And, speaking of gutter politics, here’s the gut kicker! Tommy Descartes, the UWP candidate for the constituency of Castries South, recently descended into a storm drain in that constituency, media people in tow, to show how he’s ready to work for the people there. The eye-stretching fakery comes into full view when you consider this: Tommy Descartes has never been a member of any environmental group, or participated in any environmental clean-up activity in Saint Lucia before becoming a candidate for the UWP!
St. Lucians will see a lot more of that from the UWP before the next general elections. And at the rate at which they are going, don’t be surprised if they offer themselves as godfathers/godmothers to the children of pregnant mothers in the seventeen constituencies. The fact is, the 2016 to 2021 years of the UWP government, led by Allen Chastanet and Guy Joseph, are a terrible record on which to campaign. When compared to the record of the Philip J Pierre administration, it’s like looking at opaque darkness and bright sunshine.
As we’ve said before, voting really boils down to trust. So, the question still remains: Whom do you trust with the future of Saint Lucia – Philip J Pierre and the SLP or Allen Chastanet/Guy Joseph and the UWP? The choice is clear! It is Philip J Pierre!