At last House Sitting did Castries Central MP step on Sensitive SLP Toes?

The Bill before parliament at its last sitting of the year sought approval for the waiver of the VAT on funeral home expenses, on electricity and water reconnection fees, as well as on services under the contract agreement between SLASPA and the OECC for the HIA Redevelopment Project. What was especially interesting about this part of the Bill, was that it questions government’s treatment of the working class, in particular the poor, with its imposition of excess taxes. Even more interesting, ironic even, was the sermon preached by the party that ultimately ignored its own virtue signal and imposed such an excessive (“oppressive?”) tax anyway.

The SLP has not been shy in claiming it alone cares about the plight of the malaway. Moses ‘Musa’ Jn Baptiste is famously on record as shouting from the steps of the Castries market—in Stephenson King’s time as prime minister, when Kenny Anthony had freshly returned from a spell in political Purgatory!—that the United Workers Party hates poor workers. It may also be worth reminding the forgetful that at the SLP’s 64th Conference of Delegates Kenny Anthony posed the question: What does it mean to be Labour? He then answered this way: “To shape the destiny of the poor and marginalized; to protect and promote the welfare of those unable to do so for themselves; to improve the quality of life for the less fortunate; to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Being Labour means having a social conscience.”

In the same address, Anthony recalled that “the Saint Lucia Labour Party came from the struggles of our workers against colonialism and the plantocracy [yes, he actually used the P-word!]. The UWP came from us. Born of intrigue, opportunism and disloyalty.”

But at last December’s parliamentary sitting it was a UWP administration that recognized the need to relieve the working poor of the “oppressive” VAT. The MP for Castries Central, Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, in her contribution to the debate, went to the heart of the matter.

“I rise to support the motion before us,” she said, “and I have to admit that ever since VAT was introduced, in 2012 I believe, there’s been a question I’ve tried to answer and to this day I’ve not been able to. And the simple question: What mindset, what frame of mind caused a government to place VAT on a reconnection fee of an essential need such as water? What mindset was responsible for that? What mindset caused a government to put VAT on funeral expenses? Why would anyone within a government, a government entrusted with the responsibility of caring for people, take the opportunity to oppress the most vulnerable by placing on them a tax that, by the government’s own admission, was ‘oppressive, anti-worker and anti-poor?’ ”   

Clearly Flood-Beaubrun was referring to Kenny Anthony’s unforgettable contribution to the VAT debate back in 2007, when he was leader of the House opposition: “We believe VAT is potentially an oppressive tax; it is oppressive to the poor. It is oppressive to workers and wherever VAT has been introduced . . . one thing is certain: your retail prices jump, especially the price of food!”

Flood-Beaubrun in 2019: “Why would you take an oppressive tax and use it to target, attack and oppress poor people? I cannot imagine any group of people who would be more affected by a tax on reconnection than the poorest of the poor. Why would a government want to single out poor people in such a way as to oppress them? Clearly this was a government that held poor people in contempt!”  

Opposition MP Shawn Edwards in his turn addressed the Central Castries MP’s observations: “Mr Speaker, she questioned the mindset of the those who presided over the implementation of VAT and in all seriousness I’m putting this down to the member having had a very stressful, very tiring year, where the pressures that bear in her constituency have been very overwhelming and she’s not been able to cope.”