At election time, slogans and catch-phrases, can often be nothing but empty posturing to capture the imagination of the electorate. One would assume that these should normally signal the intent of the party offering themselves for elective office to represent and distill the broad interests of the people into tangible development gains, the kind of development that is distinct from underdevelopment and characterised by a programme that accentuates the sovereign interests of our people, above those of the ones who have historically used their control of our resources to extract rather than to develop — those for whom any people-oriented development was incidental to their windfalls.
When, during the campaign of 2020-2021, the Saint Lucia Labour Party, fondly referred to by its older adherents as Party Étoile, came up with the slogan, “Putting People First” it struck a singularly responsive chord. Not because they needed a catch-phrase to inveigle Saint Lucians into voting for them, but more importantly because it represented the very raison d’être of a party that had historically represented the aspirations of the working people. It was a party that had faithfully carried out, over the years, the programmes it had outlined to the people, it was a confirmation that the Party of Philip J. Pierre would continue along the trajectory of Sir George F.L. Charles and those following him, including Dr. Kenny D. Anthony.
And why not?! It is the people, and not just a handful of privileged individuals, who labour to create the value that defines and gives rise our economic and social well-being. The first responsibility therefore of our political representatives is to help ensure and facilitate that our continued development redounds to the benefit of all sectors of our people, hence the imperative to put them first. This is especially so as our peripheral and open economies still struggle with the vestiges of colonialism and languish in underdevelopment.
You can imagine my consternation therefore, when some time ago, the media reported (accompanied by the relevant sound-byte) that former Prime Minister, and now Leader of the Opposition, Allen Chastanet claimed that he did not understand what it was to put the people first, and further that he did not see how this could work!! This would perhaps explain the whole tenure of his 5 and one-half years in office.
The 2016-2021 tenure of the Chastanet-Guy Joseph regime was characterised by nothing but actions that transferred our patrimony and large sums from our treasury to interests not in keeping with our development priorities. The arrangements with Ernst & Young, Theo Ah King, Permandu, among others were clearly not well thought out. Or if they were, our people were not the priority. The scuttling of the financial arrangements for the development of our air and sea ports, the St. Jude Hospital, the ending of the Vieux Fort Administrative Complex etc. Both the reasons behind the Flambeau’s policies in government, as well as its governance seemed ill-advised and suspect. Did the re-architecting of these major projects and the financial arrangements regarding them allow for the siphoning off of millions of dollars which the state and the people of Saint Lucia will have to continue to pay back for many years to come?
It is clear that Chastanet’s grandiose and “visionary” hallucinations regarding multi-billion dollar projects such as the construction of 23 islands off the coast, or that which sought to make Vieux Fort a foreign enclave while destroying a meat processing facility that would have been the basis for a thriving livestock industry, the alienation of lands in the north that might have been the basis of a signature historical/cultural/ecotourism project built around a recognition of our First Peoples (the Kalinago), and many other misguided actions and fantasies, have been designed to make us all strangers in our own land. And to keep us as a people doomed to languish in self-alienation.
This cursory examination of Flambeau’s 2016-2021 term, the quality of their decision making, the hair-brained schemes they considered as visionary, the squandering of state resources that defined that government as distinct from any preceding it – this puts into context Allen Chastanet’s inability to comprehend the concept of putting the people first. Moreover the apparent inability to comprehend the needs of his constituency, the needs of a people he cannot communicate with, is an indictment on his stewardship that he cannot live down. It is instructive that after almost two terms of representation, he still thinks he is representing DERASSO rather than Desruisseaux and Micoud South.
A party leader who remains insulated and distant from the people of his own constituency, not just by his inability to speak their language, but perhaps more significantly by his bombast and arrogance, truly cannot comprehend what it is to put them and the people of Saint Lucia first. Perhaps, in stating that he does not understand what it means to “put the people first”, he has been uncharacteristically honest.