The Opposition has again misread the local political tea leaves, as the Government earlier this week announced the St. Jude Hospital will be officially handed-over by the contractor tomorrow.
The ceremony, starting at 2pm, will mark perhaps the most significant achievement of the Philip J. Pierre administration, but an even more significant blow to the opposition, which simply didn’t see it coming.
After earlier misreading the Prime Minister’s readiness to call the early General Elections, the United Workers Party (UWP) candidates – from former Prime Minister Allen Chastanet to former Economic Development Minister Guy Joseph and former Tourism Minister Dominic Fedee — all claimed the PM called the election for December 1 because he was ‘afraid’ of the consequences of not delivering on that important promise.
So-adamant they were, that the UWP spokespersons (including the leader) promised that they would ‘Finish The Job’ if elected, but this continuous misreading spells and tells much-more about the readiness of the former ruling party to return to office.
Of course, Saint Lucians will not have forgotten the UWP’s record in handling hospital projects inherited from previous SLP administrations — especially the Owen King European Union (OKEU) hospital, planned and designed by the Kenny Anthony administration as part of the Millennium Hospital Complex that also included the next-door Chinese-built psychiatric hospital.
The first things the UWP administration did were to reshape the original five-wing hospital’s design by reducing it to four; and delaying the return of hundreds of local nurses being trained in Cuba.
As with every good project inherited from the previous administration, the last UWP government outsourced the running of the OKEU hospital to a foreign company through an arrangement that put more emphasis on inflated charges for the urgent delivery of medical services.
As fate would have it, the OKEU was opened by the previous administration just ahead of the COVID pandemic, which also later clearly revealed its unpreparedness to handle the transition from a building complex to the public hospital it was intended to be as part of the introduction of Universal Health Care.
During its first year under the last administration, the administrative lapses at OKEU were so-grave as to almost send some patients to their graves – from unavailability of bed sheets and basins to some patients having to outsource supplies not available at the hospital, but available much-cheaper elsewhere on island.
The ‘money first’ approach of private hospitals was harshly implemented in a hospital designed to provide universal service to all patients.
Local and regional doctors and nurses, working alongside the Cuban medical personnel attached to OKEU, worked diligently together to deliver the best possible services in the circumstances, while the government struggled to reshuffle its unhealthy institutional priorities.
Same with the St. Jude Hospital’s reconstruction project – also inherited by the previous administration and likewise saw a complete change in approach to the project than that undertaken by the preceding government, which had itself inherited the burnt-out hospital from an earlier UWP administration (2006-2011).
Like with the OKEU, the change of plans that came with regime change also resulted in increased expenditure, but diminished visibility of progress.
The disclosures by Prime Minister Pierre from the audits and other investigations into how the last UWP administration handled the financial aspects of the St. Jude Hospital’s reconstructions between 2016 and 2021 spoke loud volumes about how the previous administration handled major projects inherited.
Same with the Hewanorra International Airport (HIA) rehabilitation project that the last SLP administration left a secure internationally-financed plan for (involving a World bank agency), which the Chastanet administration turned on its head.
Ditto the Castries-Gros Islet highway project that was already guaranteed with Arab funds, which the last UWP administration also turned upside-down and had to be rescued by the Pierre administration.
Likewise with the Roseau Dam rehabilitation project that the last UWP administration paid hundreds of millions of dollars for, with only ten percent of the work done.
Same story with the development of the island’s sea ports, with the previous administration more interested in sharing slices of the cruise tourism cake with preferred partners and then proceeding to criticize this administration’s handling of the redevelopment of the island’s ports through the Global Ports Holdings (GPH) project it inherited from the last UWP administration.
The UWP has roundly-criticized the project as being implemented by the Saint Lucia Air & Sea Ports Authority (SLASPA) under the Pierre administration, but the Castries cruise terminal was just-recently-named the Caribbean’s best, winning the Caribbean Shipping Association’s (CSA) 2024 Port of the Year Award.
The list of casualties of regime change under the last and previous UWP administrations is long and costly enough to have earned the mistrust Saint Lucian voters showed regarding the UWP’s election promises in 2021 and 2025 to ‘Complete St. Jude’.
Never to admit losing even an argument, the rabid snipers among the candidates and spokespersons on UWP platforms might even argue in the final week of the campaign that the new hospital being handed-over tomorrow is ‘nothing’ until filled with sick people’.
But the grand ceremony — made possible by the efficiency and expertise of Rayneau Gajadhar’s Concrete and Industrial Equipment (CIE) Ltd. — is also what will be on display tomorrow – and that’ll be a sure source of headache and heartburn to those in the opposition today who ensured the company got no major government projects under their watch.
But then, this isn’t CIE’s first hospital project, as they also built Dominica’s Friendship Hospital a few years ago.
The RG Group of Companies is also contracted to build a brand-new hospital in Montserrat, where construction is well-underway.
Against this background, therefore, it’s completely understandable that those opposition politicians who put party before patrimony and self before country in pursuit of power, will feel very sick while the rest of the nation attends and follows the grand ceremony tomorrow.
But the real pain will be on Election Day!