Are Gargoyles and Boloms to Blame for the St. Jude Nightmare?

On the morning of Tuesday, January 17 Saint Lucia’s House of Assembly convened its first session for the year 2023—in the usual fashion. It started late. Over and over the MPs contravened the established House rules, in particular Rule 11: “A member shall not read his speech, but he may read extracts from written or printed papers or books in support of his argument, and may refresh his memory by reference to notes.” Also casually trampled underfoot was the rule that “proceedings of the House, inclusive of the records of such proceedings, shall be in the English language provided that a member may offer occasional explanation in Kwéyòl.” With the Speaker’s leave, of course!

This particularly persnickety beholder was time after time given good reason to recall sections of the prime minister’s most recent New Year address. Telling sections that centered on ill-behaved public officers: “We cannot allow ourselves to be seen as aiders and abettors of crime. I speak particularly of parliamentarians and other public servants. We must be exemplary in our conduct, professionally and otherwise.”

From the same speech: “If as a people we can all adopt a zero-tolerance attitude to crime—whether it involves running a red light, knowingly driving vehicles unfit for the road, tossing garbage and broken furniture into the river, child molestation, or peddling untruths on social media—chances are we will think a lot harder before arming ourselves with illegal weapons to kill, injure or rob our fellow citizens.” Judging by all that transpired at the year’s first House session, it seemed the majority of his colleagues had not received the prime minister’s desperate memo. That, or their advertised familiarity with the Standing Orders of the House is rhetorical hyperbole.

Even Mr. Speaker, who upon assuming his great office in 2021 had deemed it necessary to reassure our crime-besieged nation that on his watch House rules would be obeyed to the letter, and that honorable members who behaved dishonorably would, as he typically put it, “feel my wrath,” has on occasion brought to mind the parable of the mote and the beam—if not the scary spectacle of vice preaching to vice.

Last October, he abruptly announced his decision to take the Leader of the Opposition before the Committee of Privileges—a largely unheard of cabalistic panel of MPs of which, it turns out, Mr. Speaker is a member and chairman—on charges of mal conduit still unclear to many Saint Lucians. The matter eventually came before the high court, with the claimant complaining Mr. Speaker had not followed proper procedure, and in consequence had threatened the claimant’s rights, human and constitutional. Upon the claimant’s application, the court granted an order restraining Mr. Speaker from conducting any business of the Privileges Committee in relation to the complaints against the claimant, until another hearing scheduled for December 1, 2022.

Almost four months later, there has been no further official word on the question of Mr. Speaker’s alleged abuse of the authority afforded him by the House rules. It’s as if none of the above had ever happened. The House has received from Mr. Speaker no update with regard to his scheduled precedential sitting of the Privileges Committee hearing—and not a word about the restraining order laid on him by the court—another kick in the teeth of House procedures. So much for the prime minister’s New Year wish that his fellow parliamentarians will do all in their power not to encourage the widespread and growing perception that the nation’s law makers are among its worst law breakers. (The referenced public perception may have been confirmed by Prime Minister Kenny Anthony’s revelation in 2015, following a highly controversial investigation, that crime in Saint Lucia is facilitated by government ministers and other politicians, local businessmen and rogue police officers. That there has been no follow-up action by the authorities since Anthony’s disturbing revelation is widely considered palpable proof of something rotten in the state of Denmark!)

The Order Paper for the 17 January 2023 House sitting atypically invited honorable members to “advise the Cabinet of Ministers to consider and approve the recommendations presented by the Review Committee for the completion and commissioning of the St. Jude Hospital to facilitate the move and transfer of operations from the George Odlum National Stadium to the original St. Jude site.” Also, to advise the Cabinet of Ministers whether to “explore other sustainable health opportunities for the St. Jude Hospital site.” Be reminded, dear reader, in the current House the opposition occupies just two of the seventeen seats. Most of the rest—including two independents who converted right after the 2021 elections—are members of the prime minister’s cabinet. Besides, there never was an occasion when the House majority did not see aye to aye.

If among viewers of the televised session now under discussion there were some who speculated about the government’s intentions, they would not for long be left in limbo. (It is hardly classified information that in the thirteen years since a mysterious fire gutted the original St. Jude, the island’s two political parties had never agreed on anything related to the hospital’s restoration. $400 million dollars later, they are still at each other’s jugulars, locked in a fixed blame game programmed to endlessly benefit incumbent politicians, as well as their well-placed professional friends.) From the get-go the House atmosphere suggested a not-ready-for-prime-time reenactment of the legendary gunfight at O.K. Corral, this time with conflicting reports by the consulting firm FLDL and by the government-appointed SJHRP Review Committee as the weapons of choice.

The prime minister kicked off the day’s shootout with the following presumed words of comfort for Saint Lucians too long denied the services of St. Jude hospital. Head bowed, he spoke in a remorseful tone: “I want to say simply, but sincerely, that we are sorry and wish to assure them that while my administration continues to hold their trust we will do everything we can to end the nightmare experience with St. Jude Hospital and to ensure it is never repeated.” He also extended his personal condolences to the relatives of St. Jude patients who had perished in the 2009 fire. 

The generated funerial ambience evaporated soon afterward, with the now fulminating prime minister citing “political retribution and a callous nature” as the reasons why the Allen Chastanet government, upon replacing Kenny Anthony’s in 2016, had discontinued the near-completed construction of a state-of-the-art St. Jude. For several minutes he read from a report that seemed to confirm long denied allegations the building was seriously flawed. But then on the occasion the prime minister had larger sardines to roast. “If a government is serious, and not vindictive and callous,” he said, jabbing and uppercutting the air as if shadow-boxing, “it would not leave a building, from 2016 to 2019, for the bush, for the animals, for bats, not when that government has a report that says exactly what’s wrong with the building and how to fix it.” He paused, perhaps to consider how best to disguise yet another non sequitur. “Mr. Speaker,” he said at last, “the people of Saint Lucia must ensure these people never get back into power in Saint Lucia, because this is absolute wickedness. It’s wicked, it’s callous. You have a report that tells all that’s wrong. We never claimed the buildings are perfect.” (The last statement amounted to an irresistible excuse for hypercritical nitpickers to reach for Facebook.) 

Strategically seated shoulder to shoulder directly behind the prime minister, two of the government’s leading ladies, his press secretary Maundy Lewis and his party’s chief image engineer Lisa Jawahir, smiled hibiscus-red smiles, as only sirens can smile. He said he often shed tears, “real tears, not on-demand tears,” whenever he contemplated the plight of distressed citizens denied appropriate medical facilities. “You mean to tell me,” he went on, in common street parlance, and in mock disbelief, “you mean to tell me people are suffering, nurses and doctors are giving yeoman service in a stadium, you leave them there because you don’t want to follow the mandate of the last government on the basis of flawed projects? You allow them to suffer when you have a document that tells you what to do and where to find all the materials?”

The particular theme was soon discarded in favor of one less depressing. He fished out of his breast pocket a neatly squared white handkerchief, delicately dabbed the corners of his mouth, wiped his dripping forehead left to right, rocked right and left on his feet before proceeding. Reminiscent of the local televangelist Pastor Ben, he intoned: “God is not asleep, Mr. Speaker. I have never in all of my political career, which has been most successful . . .” He paused, chuckled, returned his hanky to a breast pocket, held aloft his right index finger. “I am a six-star general and whether they like it or not, the next time I will be a seven-star general, Mr. Speaker. No matter what they say, no matter what they write, the people of Castries East will always vote for me!”  

At the audible prompting of an off-camera apostle, he pointedly added: “My party will never seek a court injunction against me!” One more time the neon smiles flashed behind him. The flashers knew, as did everyone else, whose name was engraved on the last fired bullet. And it was not the injuncted Mr. Speaker! Meanwhile, in my mind’s eye, a closet hater of folks from “shit-hole countries like Haiti, El Salvador and the African nations,” soon to be President of the United States, was braying: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

The predictable noisy reaction from our prime minister’s amen corner returned me to the earlier mentioned inadvertent reenactment of the legendary Tombstone, Arizona gunfight. As if directed by an invisible orchestra leader’s wand, the actors slapped their hands on the varnished table in front them. At last, the prime minister decided it was time to hear another version of himself, however embarrassing.

As each government MP took his turn at the House microphone, his or her colleagues pounded the table. Again and again and again. It seemed they pounded several decibels louder whenever someone spat out a line that even remotely sounded like an insult to a particular MP—whether or not in his absence. Save for the contributions of three MPs who referenced reports by authors carefully handpicked for reasons that did not necessarily have much to do with their talent or credentials, it would’ve been difficult to tell the purpose of the day’s session. One honorable member chose to revisit the birthing of the original St. Jude. Alas, he sounded like a 3-year-old instructing its mama about life on Mars. He spoke with palpable diffidence of the facility that was opened some 60 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee, vaguely referenced Danny Thomas, the Lebanese-American comedian who with others of similar heritage had formed the American-Lebanese-Syrian Associated Charities for the specific purpose of raising funds for the project that would become universally famous as the St. Jude Childrens’ Research Hospital. An inspiring story, to be sure. But there’s a time and place for everything. Saint Lucia’s House of Assembly was certainly not the place and the day’s session was hardly the appropriate time to tell it. The MP might’ve done far better to spell out the horrors of what the prime minister referred to as “the nightmare experience.” Then again, whatever else was listed on the day’s unusual Order Paper, it did not include story-telling.

Another MP seemed concerned only with photoshopping himself out of the picture. He needn’t have bothered. It was hardly a state secret that he was leader of this country’s government when the reportedly uninsured hospital went up in flames, roasting alive some of its handicapped occupants. Besides, it was also true the particular MP has spent much of his time since July 2021 in adamant denial.

Finally, the leader of the opposition, loaded down with an armful of papers, took his turn at the lectern. For a man as psychically burdened as some wishfully think he is, Allen Chastanet seemed quite at ease and still telegenic. He sported a new hairstyle and an on-trend beard. He oozed self-confidence, despite he obviously expected no favors from the Speaker’s chair. (To be fair, when to no one’s surprise Richard Frederick stood up to say at great length that much of what the opposition leader was reading was already common knowledge, and presumably boring, a seemingly unplugged Mr. Speaker patiently heard him out without comment then signaled to Chastanet to continue.)

Pointless going into detail from here on. Suffice it to say Chastanet, with nods to sections of various reports, sought to explain his government’s actions toward St. Jude upon taking office on June 6, 2016, including at least one controversial demolition. He seemed to take perverse pleasure reading comments by well-known and much-quoted civil engineer John Peters: “What has happened at St. Jude is a disgrace. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in my 34 years of engineering, in terms of contract administration. It is a mess of Herculean proportions. It was sad, as a professional reading such a document, and to see how state funds have been so wasted. It was really difficult to read the document and to see the level of maladministration in terms of how you should run a project and run a contract. It really goes to the issue of accountability . . .” By any measure a scathing review that also questioned the competence of certain individuals engaged on the project. And so, we finally arrive at the overstuffed elephant in the chamber.

Some related questions for your consideration, dear reader: Who designed the hospitals following the 2009 fire? Had he or she worked in this capacity before? If yes, which hospital? Who were the Subject Matter Experts, the architects, the engineers? Were they appropriately qualified? After all, when it comes to constructing hospitals, not all engineers and architects are created equal. Did the review committees take their directions from the politicians that engaged them? Has anyone placed the various managers of the St. Jude project under the microscope? Has everyone chosen to ignore the related interviews conducted by Dale Elliott? How many on the review committee were of independent mind? Are they open to possible concerns about conflict of interest?  Why was none of them specially invited by parliament to speak with authority on the topic under discussion? What exactly did the latest battle of suspect reports accomplish? There are several more questions still to be asked in relation to the engineers, project managers and their possibly salted-to-taste reports. Also to be analysed next time, Kenny Anthony’s remarkable contribution to the St. Jude House debate. Allen Chastanet actually endorsed some of his comments!

(As I prepare to publish, this just in: The high court decided on January 26 that Mr. Speaker had no power to refer to the Committee of Privileges any complaint by a member of the House of Assembly against another member in respect of a matter of privilege or contempt. As for the referral by Mr. Speaker to the Committee of Privileges, of the complaints against the Leader of the Opposition, Allen Chastanet, by government MPs Richard Frederick and Ernest Hilaire, respectively, it was declared null and void and of no effect!)