That any Constituency Group anywhere can boast its 37th Annual Conference is testimony to its longevity – and when it every year celebrates the achievements of the same Parliamentarian, it’s an even-greater sign of the MP’s determination.
And when that MP happens to be Philip J. Pierre, who’s also Leader of Saint Lucia’s oldest political party and the nation’s Prime Minister, Minister for Finance and National Security, Economic Development and The Youth Economy – and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, it tells a lot about who his constituency celebrated last Sunday at Marchand, in the Castries East constituency he’s won five consecutive times, now aiming for a sixth.
And when that Constituency Conference was addressed by Stephenson King, a former Prime Minister and Leader of the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP), who’s also consistently won his Castries North seat, including as an Independent in the 2021 General Elections and then joining a SLP-led Cabinet, there would surely be much to hear.
The SLP is being accused by those who find it difficult to read between the fine local tea leaves of ‘trying to be like the UWP’, thanks to the party’s outright effort to attract across-the-board national support in its bid for a second term that most voters will agree is a worthwhile pursuit.
Some refer to the SLP leadership’s overt moves to also select candidates attractive to UWP supporters (whether by past or present familial associations or through former UWP political and constituency associations) who’ve crossed the floor and offered to challenge those they now regret having once supported.
Crossing of the floor is not new to Saint Lucian parliamentary politics, but the UWP hasn’t been able to attract SLP supporters as is the case vice versa.
Since 2023, it started becoming clear that honest UWP supporters were prepared to ‘Give Jack his Jacket’ — and the SLP its due — many publicly commending PM Pierre and his administration for how they rebounded the frail and failing economy they inherited two years earlier.
In the first four years of this term, this administration has delivered on the SLP’s 2021 Manifesto promises at each of the 50 monthly Sittings of the House of Assembly since August 2021.
As the next elections approach the UWP’s leadership is getting understandably frantic, and the desperation of its online and offline propagandists can be seen and heard in every public statement and IT-generated an distorted images spread online to magnify attendance at its weekend campaign rallies.
With more UWP supporters liable to respond positively to King’s invitation to give this administration a second term by voting Labour on Election Day, desperate UWP candidates are stressing on serving-up distractions to divert from their continuing declining support: everything from superstition to race, corruption and crime — even matrimonial fidelity (and infidelity).
The opposition isn’t discussing policy issues or saying how it will better the good performance of an administration that’s found ways to maintain subsidies on fuel, cooking gas and essential food items to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and found ways to finance backpay, wage increases and other new benefits for government employees, to raise pensioners’ monthly payments and increase National Insurance (NIC) payments to elderly persons and to provide free medical services — from ambulances for pregnant mothers to free Pap smear tests and various tests for growing and elderly men.
This administration has shown it can source the funds and complete projects the last three previous administrations failed to complete or start, including the St. Jude Hospital, the Hewanorra International Airport, the Halls of Justice, the new Northern Police Division, restoration of the Custody Suites – and spending the most ever by any government of Saint Lucia to equip and enable the Police Force to handle crime.
But the UWP is offering ‘Lucky 7’ board game types of promises like ‘Ridding our streets of crime’ without offering an iota or scintillas of any indication of how they intend to achieve what no government anywhere has ever been able to.
However, the growing exodus from the UWP to the SLP is nothing new – and will continue to grow.
Caribbean voters in this age of easy access to verifiable information are increasingly showing how quick and easy they can decide whether to keep or kick a government, not based on what candidates say about each other, but on the contesting parties and candidates’ records of achievement – or lack thereof.
Recent elections in Trinidad & Tobago, Surinam, Guyana and Jamaica offered many indications that voters are opting mote today to keep what they have instead of taking chances with their future.
Voters in Saint Vincent & The Grenadines are showing similar and different tendencies, successive election results indicating they prefer to hold-on to progress they can see and feel than fall for promises of opposition forces that haven’t found a winning formula for the past five elections.
Likewise in Barbados and Grenada, where ruling parties have previously (and currently) won all seats, but other results elsewhere have reiterated that where such parties fail to deliver promises, they eventually come to realise that when you’re at the top, the only way up is down.
Dominican voters have demonstrated likewise, opting four consecutive times to re-elect the Dominica Labour party (DLP) after Roosevelt Skerrit replaced Pierre Charles following the latter’s untimely death in 2000.
Against that background, it would be no surprise to anyone (but the UWP’s shut-eyed leaders) that Saint Lucian voters should or would want to vote to keep a good thing going, instead of casting their pearls before swine.
Yet, more UWPs choosing to Vote Labour will be more of a case of wayward or misled children eventually seeing the real light and returning to the island’s ‘Mother of All Parties’, from which the UWP and every other party was born.
It would simply be a case of accepting an invitation to ‘Come back home, to Mama!’