From Gros Piton to Jalousie to Denier Riviere to Cabot to . . .

Once again in Saint Lucia it’s the season of elections. Even a firefly failing to stop at a red light after 8 p.m. can trigger bonfires of enmity. There have been times when for several months normal life was sacrificed on the straw altars of shortsighted, selfish, over- ambitious one-trick ponies desperately seeking to lively-up lackluster political campaigns.

In 1994 a beleaguered prime minister had described a televised speech by the president of the Chamber of Commerce as “a savage attack” on his administration— a smokescreen intended to cover up both the lady’s surreptitious relationship with the leader of “the criminal group known as the Banana Salvation Committee” and a selfish conspiracy to kibosh announced government plans to permit the American chain K-Mart to set up shop in Saint Lucia. The ostensible “criminal association” was also blamed for crucial bridges blown up in the dead of night and for never substantiated “sustained attempts on the life of the prime minister.”

On the afternoon of October 7, 1993, riot police at Grand Rivière opened fire on disgruntled farm workers associated with the Banana Salvation Committee and the day’s opposition party after they hijacked a section of road and disrupted deliveries to a banana boat in the Castries harbor. The police claimed they were attacked with rocks when they sought to clear the route of impediments to traffic. Two men in their early twenties died where they fell under a hail of bullets. Sixty other men, women and their curious children suffered serious injury. The prime minister’s mindless reaction minutes after the incident further stoked the fires of rebellion: “The hooligans got what they deserved . . . the police had little choice but to defend themselves.”

But before all of that was the game- changing 1979 incident in the island’s capital a mere two weeks following a general election campaign at the center of which was the issue of independence from Britain. The thrashed United Workers Party was holding a ritual post-election thank-you rally in William Peter Boulevard, then the city’s commercial center, when they were stormed by soused supporters of the victorious St. Lucia Labour Party. Almost every show window in the vicinity was smashed and looted—with no police intervention. The election casualties were lucky to escape with their lives. Three leading members were seriously hurt by stone throwers. Others were drenched by a rainstorm of human feces tossed from all directions at their makeshift platform. Politics in Saint Lucia would never again be the same!

Of course the ominous writing had long been on the wall, but of what use was that to the deliberately dumb and their illiterate apostles? On June 12, 1989, I received a letter from a man named Mark Woods who described himself as “factotum for Island Ventures Limited,” based in Laguna Niguel, California. This was in response to my story a short time earlier published in the STAR about a developer who had already received the government’s approval in principle for his project, despite it included the decapitation of the island’s most revered landmark— Gros Piton.

In his letter Mr. Woods sought to assure me that “from the beginning we have had only one objective: to bring the Gros Piton Resort, the Amerindian Cultural Center and aerial tramway as well as the Soufriere Plantation Spa, golf course and waterfront village, to fruition for the benefit of your island.”

During the previous two years he had been “encouraged, praised and supported at numerous meetings with government and through letters from the prime minister, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism and the Soufriere Tourism Development Program . . . and rightly so,” he observed, “because the Gros Piton and Soufriere projects may well be the life- line and turning point for all of St. Lucia, providing thousands of jobs and placing millions of badly needed dollars into the St. Lucian economy.”

Woods warned me there was a great deal at stake. “What a pity it would be for government and all St. Lucians,” he wrote, “if this tremendous opportunity is lost because of misguided people with emotional opinions based on innuendo, not facts. I pray you will use this information wisely, should you choose to publish it, and I will look forward to meeting with you for a more detailed interview once the Environmental Report is released.”

I had read barely half of the above cited letter when another urgent missive reached me, from the same source: “Dear Rick, believing you to be a man of integrity and as you said, ‘doing what is right,’ I ask that you please disregard the letter you asked me to send you. To publish the letter will ruin all chances of having the projects succeed. Please call me so I can explain.”

I needed no explanation. That Woods had copied to both the PM and to his tourism minister his letter to me proved his naiveté and how little he knew about local politics. Worse, he had also sent me copies of letters dated 21 March and 11 April 1989, signed by the prime minister and his Cabinet colleague—both approving his envisaged Gros Piton project even before Cabinet had green-lighted it. My related reports in the STAR attracted the attention of then overseas-based Derek Walcott, who wrote several articles strongly condemnatory of Woods’ proposals, one in the form of a poem entitled “Litany of the Pitons,” wherein he famously dismisses the government’s desperate justifications as “the argument of whores.” Shortly before Woods first contacted me, the prime minister had told a BBC interviewer in London: “This whole eco-tourism thing is a fad that soon will go away.”

What Mark Woods finally failed to get off the ground, Scotsman Lord Colin Tennant of Glenconner, a relative of the Queen of England, lifted to the heavens. He started with the purchase of Soufriere’s 338-acre Ruby Estate in 1976, for EC$600,000. Following the controversial passing of his son in 1982 Tennant acquired Jalousie, owned by an elderly American woman, for US$1.8 million. With much assistance from his friend the island’s prime minister, to whom he had been introduced by the prime minister of St. Vincent, Tennant constructed Jalousie Plantation Resort.

There were no protest gatherings to speak of, scant press coverage, no chaotic interventions by the National Trust, the Archaeological Society and other related institutions. With financial backing from filthy rich overseas friends invited by Tennant to sample aboard a luxury yacht the bewitching Jalousie atmosphere by day and by starry night—Prince Charles was among the specially invited—the Scotsman went to work on his dream replacement for Mustique, legendary hangout of the rich and famous, inclusive of such as Princess Margaret and various other blue bloods, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Naomi Campbell and several of the day’s A-list movie stars. Alas, it seems Tennant’s fellow shareholders in the Caribbean Shangri-la considered him too much the eccentric bon vivant and too little the businessman, and bought him out.

In 1991 Tennant met Prince Abolsath Mahvi, a Miami-based son of the doomed Shah of Iran. He would soon hand over to Colin Tennant US$500,000 in exchange for 320 of the 480-acre Jalousie property and ten percent of the resort. It wasn’t long before overseas environment activists started taking interest in what was going on undisturbed behind the barbed-wire fences at Jalousie Plantation, among them Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the famous Jacques Cousteau, who published several protest articles in this newspaper.

Cousteau revealed that in 1985 the Saint Lucia government had requested of the OAS technical advice on how to develop the Gros Piton area. “Recognizing the outstanding natural features of the Pitons as an international attraction, the OAS recommended keeping this jewel as a centerpiece through the establishment of the Pitons National Park, a reserve that would attract tourists to its landscape, nature trails and underwater scenery. The OAS projected cost for creating the park at roughly US$1.6 million, likely to be raised from international development sources, and estimated US$8 million in annual income to Soufriere by the park’s third year. It also predicted the creation of four hundred permanent jobs.”

Still by Cousteau’s account: the OAS study concluded that a private hotel and villas between Gros and Petit Pitons, then contemplated by outside investors for the Jalousie area, would be “incompatible with the park and that the success of small hotels, villas and guest houses, as well as other tourism-supporting small businesses, would be doubtful in the absence of the park. What is at play now in Saint Lucia are two alternative philosophies likely to come into increasing conflict as the world’s underdeveloped places become fewer . . . Only time will tell which strategy does the most good for the people of Soufriere, home and the Pitons.” Time has certainly spoken since. A lot. Alas, to deaf ears mainly!

Pointless revisiting the more recent political football matches with land as the ball—for the most part, privately owned, including the Heritage Site in Soufriere that comprises property never properly acquired but nevertheless effectively government controlled. Surely we’ve not forgotten the gruesome details. In all events, there are the grotesque relics at Paradis and elsewhere to jog the memories of convenient amnesiacs. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose!

And so we come to the most recent Lilliputian war, initially declared by political chameleons on the purchasers of property previously owned in turn by Germans, Italians and other non-nationals. Once known as Lavoutte, the area has been renamed Cabot for its current owners, a highly successful Canada-based company especially famous for its golf courses. The land had been in receivership for a decade or so when Cabot bought it and soon afterward started developing it—at a time when a general election was two years or so away and the previously somnambulant National Trust never more aggressively proactive.

Hardly a day went by without a TV story starring the statutory body in open contention with the prime minister. There were so-called “citizen demonstrations,” people marches and rallies under a variety of names but of the same mindset, replete with provocative placards, some with appropriate authority, others not. Of ostensible concern were artifacts reportedly at the site that some claimed were of such historical importance as warranted preservation. Similar cries were heard in relation to Jalousie and other local projects, but not nearly as noisy or as sustained. It seemed the aggression intensity depended on which party formed the day’s government.

It turns out that the folks behind Cabot had in relatively recent times engaged the services of a well-respected archaeologist, on the recommendation of none other than the Trust’s president. He found little that might usefully be preserved. Earlier digs dating back to the late 50s and early 60s had uncovered ancient pottery and other artifacts, but by all the evidence little if anything was done over the years that might’ve protected other hidden archaeological treasures.

Two weeks ago, the noise having somewhat abated in the COVID atmosphere, I took the opportunity to invite Cabot’s ebullient CEO Kristine Thompson on my TV show TALK, perchance she might shed light on the history of her company’s investment in Saint Lucia, much of it having been rendered confusing by well- intentioned but ill-informed folk with a genuine interest in local archeology, a large number of well known roro addicts, opposition-party campaigners, professional mischief makers, xenophobic nut-jobs, and others with not so secret personal gripes against members of government.

Their latest target is the National Insurance Corporation. Why had the NIC extended to the company a loan of EC$27 million? Why had the corporation not been as generous to local business people who might’ve bought the property for the purposes of “low-cost housing for our poor people?”—this last accusatory question from at least two individuals associated with the government’s official opposition.

Kristine Thompson proved a hit with the show’s audience, at least two of whom thanked her for clarifying a previously troubling issue. It emerged that much of what Thompson said had two years earlier been revealed during an NIC press conference to announce the corporation’s involvement in the proposed Cabot development. At the recalled meeting it was underscored that “except for the director of the NIC, all the directors of the board are independent of the corporation.” Also, that although ministerial responsibility for the NIC falls to the Minister of Finance, “the board has never been instructed as to its decisions. It is an entirely autonomous body guided by the experience and expertise of its members. That is not to say there are not occasional consultative meetings with the minister through the chairman.”

The NIC is properly authorized by Section 21 of its governing act to invest surplus money in “appropriately secured loans.” In the instance at hand, the loan is “100% secured and is structured in a manner that would cause the NIC no exposure during the currency of the loan with a maximum repayment of 12 years. The security held by the NIC includes a first mortgage debenture on Cabot’s fixed assets including 360 acres independently valued at some EC$91 million in 2018.”

Kristine Thompson confirmed during her appearance on TALK that in consequence of protest demonstrations here and several uninformed attack articles published on social media that unfairly cast her company in light most unflattering of its hard-earned public image, shareholders had decided to repay the NIC loan ahead of time. The corporation received in return for its investment EC$2.4 million instead of an anticipated EC$9.3 had the arrangement ran its full course.

As for those who suggest the NIC might’ve acquired the property when it was in receivership then set out to find investors in a development similar to Cabot’s, the NIC reminded this reporter of its raison d’être that does not include the proffered suggestions. Moreover, NIC could not have partnered with Cabot since the company was not looking for equity partners. They already had partners in Canada and the U.S. for the equity required for the development— inclusive of a world-class golf course, resort amenities, a luxury boutique hotel, four bedroom villas, not to mention a beach club and fitness facilities. In all events, had NIC come aboard as a partner the loan would’ve been unsecured equity capital, with no fixed rate of return.

The NIC investment portfolio would probably not allow unsecured equity investments in private companies. The risks are too high. By Thompson’s account, the Cabot resort is expected to be operational next year. In the circumstances, and with elections looming, it appears opposition to the Cabot resort development will have to find a new dead-horse to flog!

This article first appeared in the April 2021 edition of the STAR Monthly Review. Be sure to get your printed copy on newsstands or view it here: https://issuu.com/starbusinessweek/docs/star_monthly_review_-_april_30_2021