It’s not unusual for politicians seeking office to forget that voters always remember those things those appealing for their votes wish they’d forever forget – and it’s the same today in Trinidad & Tobago, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and Saint Lucia, as it was yesteryear.
Likewise, elections campaigns normally see citizens departing from usual norms of demanding truth and honesty and making allowance for what they treat as ‘usual behaviour’ by politicians — in the process accepting statements and declarations they would usually either reject or complain about.
Last weekend, I highlighted here the distinct possibility that Caribbean elections today continue to be influenced by usual external political suspects through coordinated strategies and tactics that bind party colours and themes in similar ways in different countries, with the same intent: to influence outcomes.
I showed how Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) – a parent company of the disgraced British-based global IT conglomerate Cambridge Analytica – was multiple times engaged by like-minded political parties in several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations.
I pointed out too, that former Vincentian Prime Minister Sir James Mitchell was a founding partner of SCL; and revealed strong indications of its active presence in the General Elections in Trinidad & Tobago earlier this year, as well as in the current campaigns for tomorrow’s (July 27) vote in SVG and in Saint Lucia’s on December 1.
I disclosed that SCL was hired for earlier elections by the similarly-named United Workers Parties (UWPs) in both Saint Lucia and Dominica, twice by the now-ruling United National Congress (UNC) in Trinidad & Tobago, also by the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and the St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP).
Common SCL threads are today seen in SVG and Saint Lucia’s elections campaigns that were also present in Trinidad & Tobago earlier this year.
Anxious to prove their ‘Code is Yellow’ theme can help change governments as they believe they did in returning Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar to office in Port of Spain, the SCL’s fingernails and footprints have also been clearly-seen in the efforts by Saint Lucia’s UWP and SVG’s Unity Labour Party (ULP) to all paint they parties’ elections campaigns ‘yellow’.
Of course, the respective parties don’t publicly confirm or deny their common yellow threads, simply electing to continue doing-their-do, on-and-off platforms, according to a common script.
The SCL has established a strong reputation for engaging IT and effective online mechanisms to influence voters and the parties that hire them at sky-high prices through undeclared payments, using hidden external campaign-financing methods that continue to defy their own public calls for transparency they often demand while in opposition.
Thanks largely to SCL’s support, SVG’s opposition National Democratic Party (NDP) is today claiming it’s sure to oust Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves’ ULP in tomorrow’s elections — there after five consecutive failures in the past 25 years.
Likewise, Saint Lucia’s UWP feels confident that its support from SCL and its leader Allen Chastanet’s membership of the leadership of the regional political alliance called the Caribbean Democratic Union (CDU) will enable it to reverse the trend that saw its overall 15-2 rejection by voters in the 2021 General Elections.
It’s also quite noteworthy that, in the run-up to the December 1 General Elections, Chastanet appeared on fraternal party platforms in Trinidad & Tobago and SVG – and the same imported cultural artistes have been performing on the same political platforms in SVG and Saint Lucia.
As it turns out, Chastanet last year addressed the UNC’s supporters in Trinidad & Tobago on March 4, 2024 at its 4th Anti-Crime Town Hall meeting, held at the SWAHA Hindu College in Sangre Grande.
Interestingly, while today courting gangs at home to adopt the ‘Yellow Code’, Chastanet back-then took an anti-gang stance, saying Caribbean nations “shouldn’t view crime as a domestic issue” and drawing attention to the gang problem already affecting the region.
He emphasized that “larger, worldwide networks of gangs possessing superior weaponry and technology are the ones causing the most trouble” regionally.
“We must protect each other’s borders to be able to protect ourselves,” Chastanet told the UNC supporters, calling to on regional governments to provide funding for a regional security system covering all Eastern Caribbean nations.
The existing Regional Security System (RSS) – established after the 1983 US-led invasion of Grenada that his party supported while in office – represents Barbados, Guyana and Eastern Caribbean nations (Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines).
But since Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica weren’t members, Chastanet called for creation of a new regional entity “that is going to support all of us” by “keeping out” what he described as “the gang scourge”.
He also called his Sangre Grande audience to “have compassion for crime victims,” since the day would come when they too will be affected personally by the violence produced by gang crime.
Chastanet said: “I am pleading with all of you… Open your hearts and feel the pain of the people who are being affected, because today it’s them, tomorrow it’s going to be you.”
He continued, “You will be the mother saying ‘He was a good boy…’ But don’t wait for it to happen before you find out how lonely the world is and that nobody really cares.”
Chastanet had been earlier appointed a Vice President of the International Democratic Union (IDU) – parent grouping of the CDU – and while addressing the UNC anti-crime conference, he called for establishment of a new alliance of Caribbean opposition parties.
However, what the UWP Leader either did not know or may have forgotten, was that decades earlier, Saint Lucia’s SLP, in opposition and under the leadership of Julian R. Hunte, had pioneered establishment of a Standing Committee of Opposition Partis of the Eastern Caribbean (SCOPE).
So, is Chastanet forgetting what he said before, or failing to remember what words he spoke where?
The answer is in the air…