I don’t go overboard every year cataloguing statements and actions by leaders and public personalities to grade them every December based on the marks they accumulated in the earlier 11 months, but one can’t avoid observing the importance of the never-ending trend of reviewing years that end and previewing that (and those) to come.
NATIONALLY
This year, without considering gender or any other factors except leadership and results, I again place Prime Minister and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, Castries East MP Philip J. Pierre, at the Head of Table at the end of a third year of delivering on election promises without end and taking governance to higher heights.
As Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, PM Pierre again made it seem so easy to find the funds to fund projects successive previous administrations either abandoned or never thought of, while his government absorbs all taxes associated with cooking gas, fuel and essential food items.
This year, his government, under his stewardship, introduced an affordable minimum wage and raised pension payments for government and NIC Pensioners, settled on outstanding public service backpay and agreed to a six-year 13% wage increase and new agreements with unions — and still found the funds to provide a $500 bonus for over 12,000 government employees.
As Minister for The Youth Economy, the prime minister has established a Youth Economy Agency (YEA) that’s unprecedentedly transforming dreams into projects with opportunities for creative expansion.
As Minister for The Youth Economy, the prime minister has established a Youth Economy Agency (YEA) that’s unprecedentedly transforming dreams into projects with opportunities for creative expansion.
Under PM Pierre’s leadership, in three years the national health services have been so improved as to include the island among the Top 10 Best Healthcare Providers in the Caribbean in a list headed by Cuba; and he’s also promised the government will attach the ‘5th Finger’ of the original OKEU Hospital, carelessly excised by an earlier administration.
As Minister for National Security, PM Pierre’s choice of entering into a six-month contract with current Police Commissioner Verne Garde is quietly paying dividends; and apart from pouring untold millions into preparing the police force to fight crime, the nation is ending the year with the first mobile police station through creative conversion of an ambulance by the police and fire departments.
The list of accomplishments can go on and on, but enough’s been said here to explain why I still place him as my Person of the Year in the political field.
My only other Saint Lucia Person of the Year for 2024 is Julien Alfred, the national and Olympic Women’s 100-meter Gold Medal and 200-metre Silver Medal winner, whose brief yet long winning streak this year made her the island’s first true national hero for the 21st Century.
Julien’s worldly charm has also brought immense pride to her country and the smaller OECS islands in CARICOM – at to the Latin American and Caribbean region generally and her humility has remained among her most vital assets as she continues being the Fastest Woman on Planet Earth.
REGIONALLY
Regionally, Guyana’s President Dr Irfaan Ali and the ruling PPP/Civic alliance are ending a fourth year demonstrating that good governance is possible in the face of infinite energy reserves and financial resources, closing the year with every qualifying citizen getting a $100,000 one-off payment in each of the nation’s ten regions.
The Guyana leader has, yet again, demonstrated to the world that developing nations can very positively handle their own development, with their own resources, irrespective of negative expectations associated with imperial theories about poor nations’ leaders’ ingrained inability to handle new national riches.
That makes President Ali my CARICOM Leader for 2024, while his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, gets my vote as the Latin American leader who most took the fight in 2024 to the declining world imperial order and a foreign-backed opposition that’s used violence and sabotage to influence the outcome of an election whose results it promised not to recognize if Maduro’s ruling PSUV party won.
GLOBALLY
For everything between his First and Second Comings as 45th and 47th US President, TIME Magazine selected Donald Trump as its 2024 Man of the Year.
Trump is leaving the world to ponder over whether Elon Musk’s ‘Space X’ will replace the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the new independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research and space research.
The Chief Twit at ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) is also already re-engineering US governance for Trump to, by design, reduce state employment across America.
The Donald is readying to again enter the White House, dressed in black and red, to darken and lighten Washington’s global lights with luminous and voluminous presidential decrees and signatures.
Meanwhile, Deep State America continues misreading and misjudging Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’ve together survived every US President since 2000.
Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on everything from Globalism to Modernity will take the People’s Republic through from the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party in 2021 to the 100th anniversary of the Founding of the PRC in 2049 and establish the philosophy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
Xi has also left no room for misunderstanding of the PRC’s insistence that Taiwan will be reintegrated with the mainland sooner than later in the Second Quarter of Century 21, the pace to be determined by circumstances in and beyond 2025.
Russia’s Putin, on the other hand, has rebuilt Russia into a global powerhouse and restored its respect as a mighty power capable of meeting all threats and challenges, overcoming Ukraine-related sanctions and demonstrably resisting NATO threats at unprecedented ballistic levels.
Putin divorced his wife to marry the state and after overcoming the two-term limit by being willing to serve as prime minister between presidencies, is undoubtedly Russia’s most popular politician.
With Sergei Lavrov as foreign affairs minister, Putin has succeeded, in less than 25 years, in restoring some past Soviet glories before the USSR lowered all its flags under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1990s.
Xi has successfully led China’s responses to Western military actions in the South and East China Seas, the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Japan, in the Asia-Pacific, while Putin has demonstrated his ability to lead Russia through sanctions by establishing new economic corridors with developing nations and regions.
For the joint and separate leadership of their nations and the developing world during a year of tighter external pressures at all levels for the global south, Xi and Putin stand out not only as my World Leaders of the Year but also as my Presidents of the Century.