2022: St. Lucia’s Year of Fear…and Loathing!

On the third day of Christmas a true love mailed to me a multiple-times-forwarded notice of our prime minister’s decision to take legal action against at least half of this country’s voters. In wide-eyed wonderment, I read that UnitedPac Saint Lucia had posted and published on Facebook “serious and defamatory statements” against Philip J. Pierre, to wit: “In less than two years in government, like his predecessor Kenny Anthony, he was awarded a brand-new white BMW and a brand-new house at Cap Estate by some well-known businessmen.” No pear trees.

My immediate puckish reaction: Lucky swine. While the poorest of the poor had their uses, it obviously didn’t hurt to have friends rich enough to say Merry Christmas with a spanking new BMW, in some unholy quarters known as “the Black Man’s Worries.” But then I went on to read that the assertions were false, that while the prime minister is indeed the proud owner of a white BMW sedan, he had purchased the high-end rich man’s ride with funds from “a financial lending institution” to which he made “monthly mortgage payments,” just like you and I and some with no obvious means of support.

Presumably of significance was the proffered revelation that he had not yet been elected the nation’s savior when he acquired his white BMW—a surprise, considering it is common knowledge his favorite color is black. Definitely not white. And that he had purchased his chariot in the worst of times—that is to say, before the 2021 general elections!  

As for the Cap Estate manse, the Office of the Prime Minister denied Pierre had ever owned one in the gated community where the rich expats live. It was hardly a secret he “remained a resident at his property at Water Works Road, where he grew up.” By now it was for him a political mantra, repeated wherever two or three were gathered in his name. Not only were the online publications false, noted the OPM’s press bulletin, but they were also “made maliciously, to damage and injure the good reputation and character of the honorable prime minister in his professional and private stations.”

The “malicious attacks” also sought to denigrate his “unsullied name.” Therefore, he had instructed his lawyers to pursue legal action against UnitedPac Saint Lucia, the United Workers Party, and “all other pages that shared the defamatory content.” Conceivably, the number totaled to tens of thousands, possibly inclusive of faithful and well-intentioned protectors of the prime minister’s July 26, 2021 victory at the polls! The OPM also served notice that the former prime minister and current Vieux Fort South MP Kenny D. Anthony would ensure justice was done. He too would drag before the courts the aforementioned malicious and vindictive organizations, the unidentified media terrorists and related yellow-bellied scoundrels.

Speaking of Anthony brings to mind an earlier time when some well-known gentlemen and a lady had been especially kind to the parliamentarian. Shortly after his party was defeated at the 2006 polls, this was how he acknowledged at a wake in Vieux Fort the uncommon generosity of his deep-pocketed constituents: “Following the elections, some young business people from this constituency decided that Kenny Anthony had contributed much to this country . . . and they stood by me, and made certain I had a decent vehicle.” One of them, later appointed a member of the Senate, blabbed to reporters: “The former prime minister never asked for anything. Some of us met him at a function and could not believe he had driven to the event in a dilapidated old truck. It just didn’t seem right, after he’d done so much for us. We came together and purchased for him the vehicle he now drives.” A $227,000 SUV, not a white BMW as suggested by the OPM bulletin!

Questioned on the matter by a TV interviewer, the singular attorney-general Philip La Corbiniere advised: “If all I’ve heard about this vehicle is true, then in the best interests of transparency Dr. Anthony should identify the donors. Otherwise, there could be implications.”

In his own turn, Anthony pushed back: “If I had something to hide, I would not have made this whole thing public. I will in due course make the necessary declarations to the Integrity Commission.” Of course, such declaration by itself, if indeed it was made, would not be nearly enough. In Saint Lucia it is illegal for civil servants, including parliamentarians, to accept reward for doing—or for failing to do—the job for which they are paid out of the public coffers. There is also a limit to the value of acceptable gifts.

We need not revisit the discombobulating rumors that in 1998 had made it necessary for then virgin prime minister Kenny Anthony to invite an overly inquisitive press on a tour of his new private residence at Cul-de-Sac so they might satisfy themselves, regardless of its long-distance appearance, that it could not have cost much more than the usual arm and a leg. In all events, Anthony reminded the sleaze fleas that for most of his adult life he had been gainfully employed. Moreover, that he had a working wife! When a friendly scribe queried why he had not filed a lawsuit against the author of a particularly offensive piece about his new digs, the prime minister said: “Sometimes it serves better to present evidence contrary to what newspapers would have their readers believe. Politicians must be wary of defense lawyers who are quick to refer to the ‘chilling effect’ ministers can have on free expression generally, and especially on citizens critical of their administration.”

(On the twelfth day before Christmas the recently elected Grenada government released to the world a detailed account of monetary and other gifts, including expensive booze, sent to the chairman of the island’s Citizenship by Investment Program. The government’s thanks-but-no-thanks, hardly diplomatic response read in part: “The value of the items is incongruent with the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Code of Business Conduct and Ethics policy. Therefore, the gift items cannot be accepted. Additionally, as stewards of the public trust, we are sensitive to ensure adherence to the Integrity in Public Life Regulations as well as the Prevention of Corruption Regulations as it relates to gifting.”) NB:Throughout its 2022 campaign for office, the current Grenada government had accused its predecessors of widespread corruption—as had Philip J. Pierre and his own party in 2021!

On another day of Christmas the Times of London had waxed poetic about Saint Lucia as “one of the most beautiful islands in the world, repeatedly voted the Caribbean’s favorite destination and famous for its twin Pitons—two forested volcanic spires which rise from the deep blue sea in postcard perfection.” But there was an “ugly side to Saint Lucia,” the paper warned, “and it became apparent this weekend after Donnie [Mc] Kinnon, a British hotelier, 51, was shot dead in broad daylight while drinking in a popular outdoor bar in the picturesque town of Soufriere.”

The Times reporter neglected to mention Mc Kinnon’s drinking partner. He, too, had been shot, though not fatally. Earlier, four citizens, one of them an OKEU nurse on her way home at the end of her shift, had been fatally shot, all within three days. Drive-by gunmen opened fire on participants in a vigil for another shooting casualty. Thirteen suffered wounds that required hospital attention. A mourner at the Vieux Fort funeral of still another casualty of random shooting was himself gunned down. Unconfirmed reports claimed the town’s MP was at the church ceremony and that he too had to make a quick exit when the shooting started.

On the tenth day before Christmas the OPM announced that the island’s prime minister had assumed the chairmanship of the CARICOM committee for law enforcement. Still according to the OPM he had earlier led a multi-agency delegation of government security officials at the eighth session of the Franco-St. Lucia joint security commission in Martinique.  He had also made time for high-level anti-crime discussions with U.S. Embassy honchos in Barbados. Whether the agenda included IMPACS is anyone’s guess. By year’s end the country had scored 70-something shooting fatalities, one of them a police officer on special assignment. Perhaps saddest of all were the deaths by fire of two infants just days before Christmas. At time of writing it has not been determined how their home went up in flames while their mother and another sibling were grocery shopping.

Of course, there was also some good news in 2022. Especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The government took the opportunity to celebrate with appropriate pomp and ceremony the appointment of the country’s first female police commissioner, to whom was handed two or three new and shining vehicles, the better to pursue her own crime-fighting strategies. In various ways, the OPM applauded the boss for always putting the people first: forty-seven former LIAT personnel received long overdue terminal benefits “in the form of government bonds that can be used as collateral to secure loans,” thanks to his intercession. Eighteen years after a foreign company named Majestics abruptly closed shop and vanished without trace, 196 abandoned local employees each received on the eve of Christmas a lump sum of $10,000—because “Philip cares.” The combined payments by the government to LIAT and Majestics amounted, according to repeated OPM bulletins, to over six million dollars. And long-suffering over-worked public servants were rewarded with back-pay totaling close to seven million dollars, with some sixteen million more to come.

Hopefully, there’ll be further good news announcements from the prime minister when he addresses the nation three days from now—especially in relation to local security and our long-broken justice system. The surviving casualties of the several unresolved homicides going back decades deserve that, at the very least. It would do the nation’s spirit much good if on Sunday the prime minister should announce the appointment of the much-anticipated Special Prosecutor and a time-frame within which to fulfill his most important assignment. Also, an update on IMPACS, including when DPP Greene intends to keep his eve of elections promise to the nation in relation to homicides in the time of Operation Restore Confidence. Human rights activist-attorney Mary Francis and her several grieving mothers will doubtless be appreciative of further evidence that Philip cares, that when it comes to putting people first this prime minister is color blind!