People can simply praise and pummel someone in equal measure.
A loud minority of Saint Lucians responded negatively to news of the death of Sir Neville Cenac, who some stoned to his grave with a reputation of having committed an unpardonable betrayal of a party he spent a lifetime in bed with.
The man most older Saint Lucians knew as ‘Chandelle Molle’ (‘Soft Candle’) was unique in his mannerisms and his eloquence of expression and attire.
Cenac was a senior figure in the Saint Lucia Civil Service Association (CSA) in the 1960s, where his political activism vexed the then-ruling United Workers Party (UWP) administration led by Premier John Compton.
His old friends insist he was effectively “hounded-out” of the CSA by Compton, after which he served as a legal clerk with his barrister brother, Winston.
Cenac would leave to study law in the UK and after returning continued to align with elder SLP politicians interested in rebuilding the party after its engineered 1964 loss to the UWP.
He joined The St. Lucia Labour Action Movement (SLAM) – the first political outing of The Forum, an earlier progressive, anti-colonial entity uniting persons mainly in and restricted by government employ.
After SLAM, Cenac would play a major role convincing his long-time friend, Justice Allan Louisy, to return home to lead the SLP into the 1979 General Elections — and contest the Laborie seat.
Louisy led the party into the successful historic July 2, 1979, General Elections that saw the SLP unseat the UWP with a 12-5 victory — just five months after Independence (February 22).
Cenac stood upright with Louisy against all the challenges from George Odlum for the Prime Ministership.
The so-called ‘power struggle’ bled and shredded the likes of Neville, who felt Odlum had shown, very clearly, he was absolutely more interested in personal power than keeping the SLP in power.
Josie remained Labour after Odlum departed to form the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) — and would also be derided by a headline in Odlum’s popular Crusader newspaper as ‘The Dog Stands Alone!’ — (after Josie defiantly stood-alone to address a SLP public meeting on the Castries Market Steps).
Louisy would gracefully bow-out of elective politics and bequeath the Laborie seat to Cenac ahead of the 1983 General Elections, which Cenac won and become Opposition Leader in the House (alongside fellow SLP MP for Vieux Fort North Cecil Lay and Jon Odlum as the only PLP MP).
From a glorious 12-5 election win in 1979 to an inglorious defeat in the 1983 election that led the UWP back into office with a 14-2-1 absolute majority, the SLP, under Cenac, was Labouring in Limbo.
Cenac and Lay couldn’t alone face the headwinds and the SLP needed a new leadership change to lift it out of its self-earned quagmire.
Enter Julian R. Hunte, a former UWP Mayor of Castries and a prominent, successful local businessman — who also happened to be married to be Prime Minister John Compton’s brother-in-law.
Hunte was elected SLP Leader without a parliamentary seat, so, Cenac remained Opposition Leader – but also making it quite obvious he wasn’t consulting Hunte on parliamentary affairs, appointing his own list of senators – and excluding the Party Leader.
The Cenac-Hunte standoff would continue until 1987, when, after five years of riding a bicycle up a steep hill without brakes, ‘Chandelle Molle’ would take the historic steps (across the parliamentary aisle) that would forever seal how he would be seen by those watching him with eyes wide shut.
Under Hunte’s leadership, the SLP had sufficiently regained enough public support to again pose a very serious challenge to the UWP, as seen in the 1987 General Elections, which returned a 9-8 result that Prime Minister Compton simply refused to accept.
The PM called a second election in 21 days, which returned the same 9-8 result — creating a political situation that would add another sweet-and-sour chapter to the island’s already-colourful political history.
PM Compton having made it abundantly clear he would not rule with a one-seat majority and defied twice in three weeks on that score by the electorate, it was left to be seen how he would have dug himself out of that deep hole.
The first meeting of the House of Assembly after the second 9-8 election result would be one everyone would look forward to – including this writer, then a local newspaper editor.
That morning (June 2, 1987), excitement and expectations were high, as uncertainty reigned supreme.
All eyes were on PM Compton, but I’d noticed when he arrived that Cenac was wearing a pink tie – a diluted version of the bright-red he normally wore.
As it turned out, PM Compton had been able to work-out another post-election marriage of convenience — this time with Cenac — to save his political skin from a sharp parliamentary scalpel.
The arrangement that unfolded saw Cenac ‘cross the floor’ to the government side, thereby strengthening Compton’s parliamentary majority to a more-acceptable and less-vulnerable 10-7 majority.
Cenac was then appointed Foreign Affairs Minister – and thereafter would enjoy a splendidly comfortable life in the UWP Cabinet under Compton, right up to to his later appointment by Allen Chastanet as Governor General.
That story was a local headliner, but while Cenac is the one stoned to his grave over it by Labourites who still have no qualms with Odlum for his own mortal sins, it’s the UWP Leader who hatched the plot that also allowed him to hit his Labourite enemies where it’d hurt them (and help him) most.
Today, they’d freely accuse him of moving from Labouring under Labour to Flowering under Flambeau.
However, anyone taking time to consider the circumstances under which Sir Neville took that ‘Walk and Wine’ that earned him the ultimate political laurels sought by any politician of his time, cannot but accept that while unpopular and considered undemocratic, his critics, in his position, would definitely-not have done differently.