[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lmost from the outset of his political career, Kenny Anthony has been attempting to correct his bad subtractions by doing his additions right. On Sunday he offered further unnecessary proof that leopards really cannot change their spots: Immediately following Julian Hunte’s manipulated resignation in 1996, Kenny Anthony was handed on a gilded platter the job of making the newly neutered Labour Party whole again. But to hear him at the Laborie Boys’ School on that unforgettable April Sunday in 1996, minutes before his vociferous confirmation as the party’s great white hope, few would’ve anticipated what before long would follow.
Mario Michel introduced him to the enthralled packed house and soon he was purposefully resurrecting battles, fought by more than a few in his now aging audience, yes, but never by Kenny Anthony. That the party had survived “immeasurable suffering and disappointment was nothing short of miraculous,” he admitted. The party had experienced “all the evils that politics can spawn: leadership wars, defections, greed, one-upmanship, chicanery and, worst of all, betrayals.” Nevertheless, the transition that delivered his dream had been handled “smoothly and orderly; with confidence and transparency.” Actually, less than a dozen in his audience had the smallest soupçon of the diabolic details that had guaranteed, by the main beneficiary’s convenient measure, the seamless change-over. It had never been the business of sheep to reason why!
On the recalled historic Sunday at the Laborie Boys’ School, the new shepherd directed his flock to join him in thanking their party’s “esteemed former pillar of the north.” Did the new leader mean to say the Julian Hunte that had “safely guided our party through its latest period of uncertainty” was no more? That he had lost his mojo? The irreducible truth was that while Hunte may have delivered his party from its enemies, himself he could not save from the Brutus thrusts of his most trusted brothers!
More right additions designed to mend wrong subtractions: “The burden of leadership was entrusted to him in difficult times. Morale was shattered; hope nonexistent; betrayals rife. Our party was bankrupt. He had the will and temerity and the courage to cleanse our party of charlatans and frauds. His resignation, painful and sad as it may have been for him, his constituents and others, has allowed new possibilities to emerge.”
No need to identify the cornucopian source of exciting new possibilities. Neither the man who had made possible Hunte’s elevation back in the day: Neville Cenac. Before he “defected” in 1987, he was the sole SLP representative in parliament—in consequence of the party’s 1982 decimation at the polls. Also House opposition leader, Neville Cenac had influenced the all-important adjustment of the SLP constitution to permit a member without a seat in parliament to become party leader.
No need either to explain why Julian Hunte had not shown up to experience firsthand the dollops of fulsome praise showered upon him in absentia. Mere weeks after his uncontested installation as party leader, at the conclusion of a pre-election press conference on the uppermost floor of the Tom Walcott Building, Kenny Anthony and I were chatting near an open window overlooking the cemetery on the far side of Jeremie Street. I had taken upon myself the mission impossible of bringing together the new party leader and his implacable predecessor.
Kenny Anthony’s reaction was indicative of a mind long made up. Though he spoke at barely audible volume, there could be no denying the menace in his tone. “Julian must never ever be allowed back in the Labour Party,” he hissed. “He can’t be trusted!”
A short time later, after Hunte had declared himself an independent candidate in the 1997 general elections, Kenny Anthony stated at a public rally that all his predecessor had done as Gros Islet’s parliamentary representative was “supply coffins for the dead.” He further advised that rather than opposing the SLP’s candidate Mario Michel to benefit the UWP, Hunte should “forget about politics altogether and embark on a new career as an undertaker!”
Oh, but what a long way I’ve come just to illustrate Kenny Anthony’s propensity for serving his audiences whatever he imagines they will swallow. That includes spine-wrenching sudden reversals of earlier-held positions on important issues. Despite all he had said of the former party leader’s character during the 1997 campaign, he nevertheless had given a Hunte in need the chance (some say at George Odlum’s persistent behest!) to serve as Saint Lucia’s ambassador to the United Nations. Nothwithstanding the particular posting’s remarkable history, it landed Hunte special honors from the Pope and some shoulder-rubbing time with the recently departed Kofi Annan. I need also mention that Hunte was also readmitted to the sheepfold only to be sent to the slaughter in 2006. Predictably, he proved easy meat for Lenard Montoute!
Last Sunday, at a make or break public rally reminiscent of George Odlum at his peak—for all the wrong reasons—Kenny Anthony again exposed the chameleon in his soul when he shared a platform with Richard Frederick. In less desperate times, and on countless occasions, he had publicly denounced Frederick’s announcement of his participation in the 2006 elections as the worst evil to befall the nation. “A most frightening prospect.”
It would’ve been bad enough had the then prime minister left it at that. But Kenny Anthony is nothing if not a walking contradiction, a churning urn of steaming junk (apologies to James Taylor). For more than a decade he had excoriated Frederick from his bully pulpit, then dumped the battered and bruised carcass of his reputation in Hansard, local and foreign newspapers, the Internet and Wikileaks—unending juicy fodder for trolls and political vultures. Frederick had himself blamed the revocation of his U.S. visa on the noxious droppings at countless televised Labour rallies. Finally Frederick was added to the list of Kennycritics against whom Anthony had filed lawsuits.
Interesting how the past informs the present. Frederick had declared himself the enemy of Kenny Anthony’s worst enemy, as had Vaughan Lewis in 2006, therefore had rendered himself embraceable, never mind the accumulated tons of clinging merde dumped on his reputation by the embracer. With his unprotected back but a few feet from a seated Kenny Anthony, a bolder than bold Richard Frederick made the following promise to his applauding audience, some flaunting their red shirts, some not: “Folks, ya’ll remember me saying on TV that I would prefer Kenny Anthony to be my prime minister for the rest of my life than for Allen Chastanet to be prime minister for one day? I’m seeing down the line and I see for Christmas, I see for Christmas there’ll be a new prime minister in this country and Richard Frederick will lead the charge. I will lead the charge. I will!”
Earlier Frederick, in blue tee shirt, had explained his presence on what some may have imagined was for him dangerous ground. Said Frederick at full throttle: “I am concerned. I don’t need politics. The Almighty God has blessed me and I thank him for that. But I care about the poor people of this country who cannot speak for themselves.”
I couldn’t help recalling a time when the man seated directly behind him, now apparently fast asleep in his chair, had with the voice of authority declared Richard Frederick’s estimated worth as over $50 million. He had also revealed how Frederick had come by his millions. By the then prime minister’s presumably reliable account, God Almighty had little to do with Frederick’s wealth!
Dear reader, who can say for certain what Kenny Anthony knows that Richard Frederick knows that you and I and our under-privileged relatives know not? For certain, Kenny Anthony sounded way off on Sunday when he sought to forge a similarity between what had befallen Saint Lucia in the unforgettable period 1979-82. At first sight of the earliest symptoms of the virulent disease that came to be known as “the leadership struggle,” Kenny Anthony had packed his bags and headed out of Dodge.
At the time even the warring Labour Party factions had together declared him a traitor, a deserter, an opportunist. To be altogether fair, for the purposes of my book Lapses & Infelicities, he had explained during an interview his abrupt abandonment of the government that had accommodated his ambition to be a senator at age 27 or 28 by adjusting the relevant law.
“I had a family to support,” said the man who would be captain of the good ship SLP. “I was conscious of the consequences should the Labour Party be forced into an election it had no chance of winning, among them that I would be out of work, without a salary, and in our political circumstances effectively unemployable.”
Fair enough, we all have our priorities. Also true is that it was while Kenny Anthony was overseas taking care of personal matters that church representatives, leading officials of government and the opposition, and some prominent citizens concluded there was only one possible cure for the plague. So it was that in 1982 Saint Lucians returned to the polls, nearly three years ahead of schedule. In the interim, God’s agents chose a member on the government’s side to hold the fort: Mikey Pilgrim.
Contrary to what Kenny Anthony recalled on Sunday—that in 1982 the people decided “rightly or wrongly that the country was ungovernable”—it was the elected schismatic government, rendered a danger to self and country by costly internecine childish squabbles, that had self-destructed. Having sacrificed two prime ministers in two years on the altar of selfish ambition, the beleaguered government inevitably imploded. Until then, the people had stood strong behind the fractious Labour Party. They were left no other choice but
to return to the polls. Neville Cenac alone made it back to the House!
Last Sunday this was how Kenny Anthony introduced himself to his audience: “Tonight I have come to bray. You see, I am one of the jackasses; so I have come to bray. I am supposed to bray for ten minutes and my message to you will be very simple. The time has come to bring an end to this madness sweeping the country.”
Before the final curtain, the party leader (in mufti) informed his onstage colleagues and others who may have been given special reason to look forward to Christmas that “you the people will determine how long Allen Chastanet will remain in government.” Alas three days later, as if in confirmation of Kenny Anthony’s “madness sweeping this country,” Pierre announced that at the next sitting of the House his side would move a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, in whose United Workers Party electors had invested such confidence as to guarantee them eleven of the seventeen seats in the House.
