The more I listen to our social commentators, well-intentioned and otherwise, the more I am convinced that those who can do, while those who can’t rant. Then there are those whose sole purpose for sounding off like stridulating crickets is to land by whatever means the only job opportunities seemingly accessible to them: public sector contracts, to be paid for by barely surviving taxpayers oblivious of their employees’ qualifications, neither their police record.
Then there are the politicians, in and out of office. Actually, little separates them: soon after they’re elected to office the majority side assumes the idiosyncrasies of the previous government, now the House opposition. That is to say, the first category spend their time tossing at those they replaced the most serious allegations with threats of investigations, attributing to them all that’s wrong with life in Saint Lucia, as if they had themselves never been part of the parliament that had sanctioned or endorsed with their silence and their ignorance the cited egregious betrayals of the public trust—and therefore not complicit!
To illustrate: During a House session a year or so ago the Castries Southeast MP, Mr. Guy Joseph, had reason to cite Section 41 of the Finance (Administration) Act. An earlier version of the law had permitted the 1997 prime minister lawfully to guarantee a bank loan on behalf of the two foreign owners of Rochamel Development some US$41 million dollars—without first seeking House approval. Different aspects of the matter had finally landed it in court and before a judicial inquiry. Ostensibly in an attempt to prevent a repetition of the costly fiasco, the Stephenson King administration had in February 2011 amended Section 41 of the Finance Act, so that it now read as follows: 1) “A guarantee involving any financial liability is not binding upon government unless the minister grants the guarantee in accordance with an enactment or with the prior approval of parliament by a resolution of parliament. 2) A resolution of parliament under subsection one must give full details of the amount guaranteed, the terms and conditions of the guarantee, the person or legal entity in whose name the guarantee is intended, and the object and reasons for the giving of the guarantee. 3) The minister may grant a guarantee on such terms and conditions as he or she may think fit.”
Any fool could’ve concluded after a quick first reading of the revised law that Section 3 effectively returned it to its original state that in the first place had permitted a finance minister to have his way with loan guarantees for friendly foreigners. Almost immediately following the cockeyed revision, I approached some of the MPs and Senators who had been involved in the process, perchance they might agree to revisit what they had done and correct it. They all agreed the amended law made no sense at all, thanks to the superfluous Clause 3. To date it remains unremedied.
On the remembered occasion when Guy Joseph referenced the official faux pas, another MP who was the House opposition leader when the amendment to the Finance Act was debated in 2011, therefore complicit, took the opportunity to wake up the peacock in his psyche. Not even bothering to lift himself out of his upholstered perch, he spat out his response: “I sat there and listened in silence as ya’ll made the law worse than it was.” His reaction was hardly surprising. He was the prime minister and minister of finance in 1998, when the Rochamel loan was guaranteed without House approval!
For those who might conjecture such dishonorable behavior on the part of our elected honorable MPs is unusual, think twice. A month or so ago, when the day’s topic centered on the status of oilman Jack Grynberg’s US$500 million lawsuit against this country’s government, Philip J. Pierre, leader of the House opposition, was asked at a press conference whether he would revisit the route of the problem. Without the slightest stutter, he let it be known far and wide that should his party be returned to office following the next general elections “there will be no probe in Grynberg.”
Again, no surprise. In the close to 20 years since countless acres of Saint Lucia’s sea bed were secretly leased to “a con artist” (according to worldly MP Richard Frederick) all official efforts at persuading Kenny Anthony to provide information that might possibly assist the government of Saint Lucia in countering Grynberg’s claims have proved futile. The man who secretly contracted the controversial American oil speculator in the first place has stubbornly refused to cooperate with the government’s lawyers.
Why then should it come as a surprise that his second in command at the time of the surreptitious signing has himself also refused to cooperate with the government? Conceivably, to tell what he knows about the Grynberg issue—or to initiate a related judicial investigation—could prove detrimental to his own political future. Better to let the dead bury their dead, regardless of possible cost!
On the other hand, when Allen Chastanet’s party was seeking to replace the Kenny Anthony government in 2016, the two most repeated promises of his campaign centered on the fall-out from the prime minister’s bungling of the IMPACS investigation and his stubborn refusal to divulge the secrets of Grynberg.
The campaigning Chastanet convinced voters he could rescue them from the results of Kenny Anthony’s handling of both matters. Three years later, IMPACS is no closer to a useful resolution, with increasingly worse consequences overtaking the nation’s justice system.
Meanwhile, it appears Grynberg has the government butt-naked over a barrel. Of course, neither side sees the need to unite against their common enemies, not when, whether by divisive propaganda and unconscionable prevarication, they can persuade a largely uninformed polarized public to vote for perceived lesser evils. To which, the undiscerning reader might correctly say, Oh but we’ve been there before. Sadly, that’s not the same as saying our politicians have learned the errors of their ways!
