FINALLY its over and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. So much shouting, so many political advertisements, so much negativity! Just where did all that money come from? Congratulations are however due to the winner, the UWP.
It also however has to be the greatest indictment of a party which had held office for the last four and a half years that in the final analysis, its quest for victory relied not on promotion of its achievements during those years, but in its continuous denunciation of the suitability for office of the Opposition and of the opposing candidates.
Some are of the view that in politics, negative advertising works, and that may be true. What we saw in this election however was a political campaign openly based on denigration, ridiculing, and attempts at humiliation of opposing candidates by the then governing party. Who has not been too short has not been sufficiently St. Lucian, and those who have yet to be accused of financial mis-management by any competent authority were decimated in the public domain with no need to substantiate any claims. It did not work.
Those who however have been publicly accused of mis-use of funds received from the Government of the Republic of Taiwan have yet to be hauled before the Courts, although, immediately having assumed office, the SLP government initiated an audit of those funds and produced an accusatory report. With the report in hand, the then government chose to do nothing about it, seemingly keeping those accusations in their back pockets for recycling at this general election. So in the just concluded campaign we heard of which candidate “tief”, and which candidate cannot account for the funds provided by the Taiwanese. That, too, did not work.
Interestingly though, we heard nothing regarding former parliamentarians about whom similar accusations of mis-use of Taiwanese funds were leveled but who were not candidates in this election. We can therefore only conclude that those accusations, given fresh life, were only resurrected for political gain.
Governments are not allowed to function in this manner. Politicians cannot be allowed to decide whom to prosecute and when to prosecute persons accused of criminal activity, moreso to indulge in this behaviour in the throes of an electoral campaign. That is also why the recent allegation of sexual assault by one electoral candidate against another must be vigorously prosecuted in the Courts, either by the accuser, or by the accused.
Similarly, great effect was given to the revocation of the US visa held by a former member of Parliament prior to the 2011 election. At the time, the country was given the assurance by the leader of the SLP, then in Opposition, that, immediately on assuming office, the reasons for that revocation would have been made public. Four and a half years later we’ve been told nothing, and the rumours and innuendo swirling around that former MP were thus given life.
In one of our sister isles, a politician is on record as stating that “politics has its own morality”. He is wrong, as it is politicians who seem to have their own morality, and having lost all sense of a moral bearing, they apparently expect their respective publics to accept whatever they choose to define as the “new morality”. Only a thoroughly warped mind could convince itself of the possibility of success of this proposition, and if only to give the benefit of the doubt to any possible remaining humanity in those politicians who think and behave in that fashion, we also conclude that somewhere in the dark recesses of their minds, they must know differently.
The just-ended campaign against the leader of the UWP must rank as one of the dirtiest and most sustained attacks on an individual ever seen in St. Lucia, and maybe in the Caribbean. Commencing long before there was any hint of an election in the air, we were regularly subjected to an advertisement showing the leader of the SLP, on a political platform, exhorting his followers to ensure that the country did not fall into the hands of the leader of the UWP and his family, but without saying why this should not happen. We were told by the SLP that the coming election would be a “war” between the SLP and the Chastanet family, but again without being told why.
That silence by the SLP leader on the reasons for his declaration of war on the Chastanet family was particularly nauseating, as it then allowed every individual supporter of his party to attach their own interpretation to it. The SLP leader and then Prime Minister had every right to make those statements if he truly believed in them, but he also had a responsibility to his supporters, and to the nation, to justify them.
We witnessed the continuous attacks on Allen Chastanet and his inability to speak kwéyol, and the claims that this somehow prevented him from identifying with the plight of ordinary St. Lucians. And in the context of the earlier “100% St. Lucian” campaign, we saw Labour party politicians striving to insert the language at every opportunity and so identify themselves as truly being sons and daughters of the soil. It however took the end of the campaign for the timid excuse to emerge that it was the “class” to which Allen Chastanet supposedly belonged which could not be allowed to take over the country, but by then the damage had been done.
Because on the night of the final rally of the SLP in Desruisseaux, we were able to hear Cass Elias, a former Labour MP for Micoud South, speaking on the Labour Party platform, tell the people of Micoud South that they should not want any “white” man to represent them. He obviously thought nothing of that statement, as with the personal attacks on Allen Chastanet initiated by the Leader of his party, he must have felt that it was safe to make his statement given the environment in which he was making it. Except that it was broadcast to all of St. Lucia, and to the rest of the world.
Sadly, in St. Lucia we have come to the point where we cannot expect those in the leadership of our communities and our country to exhibit any deference to the moral values which have long been the norm, and it is now time for us to legislate those values. Those in the legal fraternity will have to advise us on how we may incorporate “hate speech” in our criminal laws, and how to give that legislation teeth, as those who have recently led us have obviously lost their way.
Moreover, at a time when most of our larger, former indigenous businesses are now “foreign” owned, our “national” bank is “foreign” owned, and the multi-national banks now require that we pay for the privilege of banking with them while placing severe restrictions on their correspondent banking facilities, is this the only war that the Labour party could have come up with – a re-hashed, re-warmed war on its own citizens based on class and race?
And is this the same Labour party government which at our last independence celebrations so proudly proclaimed the adoption of the colonial titles “Sir” and “Dame” for itself? Have they gone completely mad?
But in the midst of all the venom that was spewed during this last campaign, one of the most insidious accusations also came from the former Prime Minister himself as he accused a retired civil servant of not being loyal. His supposed basis for that accusation was that the UWP government had neglected to promote her, and that having received promotion under his administration she now had joined the Opposition forces, thus displaying her disloyalty.
We might choose to ignore the emptiness of that accusation, but what is the former Prime Minister’s message about all those other members of the Public Service who, at some time or other during the fifteen years that his administration had been in office, also received promotion? Was the former Prime Minister saying that all those persons are now loyal to him, and is this, by his own declaration, what the Public Service has been reduced to?
Quite rapidly, we have managed to plumb depths in the conduct of our public affairs previously unimaginable to most of us, and we can only hope that, as a nation, we manage to pull ourselves back up to the stature which the region and the rest of the world had previously accorded us.
To quote another of our famous calypsonians, Christopher “Tambu” Herbert: “The journey now start, do not give up; believe in yourself” (Journey, 1989).