Advice to Ubaldus Raymond: Please get with the programme!

As I walked in to work one day, everyone I passed—from the receptionist’s desk onwards—stared me up and down. I knew the reason I had suddenly become a curiosity had everything to do with a man I met in Barbados while on a media tour. Afterward he had sent to a fellow STAR employee a recording of our most recent phone conversation—during which I told him about an interview I’d conducted with a high-ranking government official and why I would reproduce it for my newspaper even though I didn’t believe a word the official had told me.

I had also supplied my Bajan friend with details of my daily discussions with my publisher. I revealed to him sensitive stories not yet published in the STAR and complained about discrimination I had suffered at work. I told him about company operations and my salary compared to my co-workers. When I noticed that he didn’t sound interested in my job woes, I changed gears. I suggested how I’d like things to go down in the bedroom the next time I visited him in Barbados. If he came to Saint Lucia, I suggested, it would be an easy matter for me to sneak out for a few hours to “interview” him like he had been interviewed before. Our recorded phone conversation had also reached my husband.

Needless to say, had any of the above actually happened, if Rick didn’t fire me, Mae probably would have. But I might have spared them the trouble and resigned, whether by WhatsApp or a hand-delivered note. It is my understanding that Ubaldus Raymond notified intent of his own resignation in similar fashion.

Before introducing his guest on last week’s TALK, host Rick Wayne said: “I’ve never invited people on my show to make them look bad. They can do that all on their own. If Ubaldus Raymond chooses to lie to me, that’s his problem. Rest assured I will check out what I need to, as I tend to do with other guests.”  But Raymond didn’t lie. Neither did he look bad. At least, he didn’t think so. “Well, first of all thank you Rick for inviting me tonight. I’ve not come here to discuss a crime that Ubaldus has committed, I’m not here to discuss any violation of anybody’s rights that I committed. I am not here to talk about my violation of the Constitution of Saint Lucia.” He said he had no problem talking about the subject at hand, which is why he had readily accept the invitation to appear on TALK. “There is no shame, I feel no embarrassment because I know I have not committed any crime.”  

Of course, in his attempt to clear the air, Raymond had to explain what had transpired while on official business in Trinidad, keeping in mind an announced on-going investigation by the local attorney general’s office. He and nine other government employees went to Trinidad on a “fact-finding mission” connected with digitizing several government services here. Four of the ten were invited to a party on the weekend before Trinidad’s Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Two weeks ago, this newspaper reported that Raymond met a woman while in Trinidad who would later become his co-star in the “salacious” (that’s been the word of the day for two weeks) phone conversations that exploded on local social media.

Asked by TALK’s host how he felt when he learned his conversations with the woman had been recorded, Raymond replied: “I was taken aback,” but when asked about the impact on the country, he said he had not been keeping tabs on related public discussions. While talking on the phone to his Trini friend did he not think of his earlier involvement with two 18-year-old Saint Lucian seducers who turned out to be blackmailers? He said he had not. Why? “Because I believed I was having a private conversation and individuals have private conversations every day.” That, as if the activities and conversations in the initial 2017 episode were not also supposed to be private!  

I have always been careful and conscious of the power of technology when talking to people I hardly know. (Ubaldus Raymond had met the Trinidadian multi-tasker just once.) Moreover, had I experienced the WhatsApp mayhem that Raymond did in 2017, I think I would have been a lot more wary of cell phones. But then, easy for me to say when I don’t know what rocks Raymond’s clock. He who is without sin and all that.

Besides, as Raymond put it somewhat carelessly on TALK: “If we have to go down that road, not one of the parliamentarians can stand. Not one who can stand. There are those who do their stuff and are doing their stuff, and they will never be caught. In fact, some of them have done criminal stuff . . .” The ever cautious host cut him off, maybe to avoid possible slander suits. Of course, since his appearance on TALK, some have been accusing Raymond of throwing his party colleagues under the bus, something he denies while adding, “Those I referred to, know themselves.”

Never mind that he believes what befell him “could have happened to any one of us,” Raymond still indicated to his prime minister his intention to resign soon after receiving “certain information”. This week the on-off decision was made final. It was publicly announced on Monday that he had officially thrown in the towel.

Invited to comment on Monday before the public announcement of the day’s resignation, a visibly uncomfortable Senator Fortuna Belrose said: “Social media does what it wants, how it wants, when it wants. We have no regulations and as a consequence of that I will wait to get the investigator’s information first.”

As for Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, somewhat ironically he said Raymond had demonstrated commitment to his country, had served it well and never faltered in his government responsibilities. All of which sounds like quite a recommendation. In any case, Raymond has publicly thanked his wife, church and female friends who are all “supporting” him and telling him to “be strong”.  It is hoped that he also received reminders that in today’s world there’s no such thing as private anymore. Neither trust. And that seems a terrible pity!