On Monday evening, as I stared disbelievingly at the televised gargantuan images of Kenny Anthony and Ausbert d’Auvergne come together for the purpose of endorsing (almost after the fact) a Code of Conduct for next week’s general elections, I thought of Lethe, the Greek goddess of the underworld’s river of oblivion. It is here, according to Virgil, that “the souls who are destined for reincarnation drink the waters that quench men’s troubles . . . so that you see, with memory washed away, they may revisit the earth above.”
The river came to mind at the sight of their bloated girths. Was this a consequence of swallowing too much of the transmogrifying water under Saint Lucia’s most famous bridge? It had occurred to me, as I watched a kissy-kissying Kenny Anthony and Ausbert d’Auvergne inadvertently reminding their notoriously homophobic TV audience of same-sex relations, that the reason the often-cited water under the bridge was so popular among a certain type of politician had less to do with its ability to wash away the clinging nasty smell of combined corruption and deceit than with its capacity for inducing amnesia.
Witness: mere months after he had publicly described Kenny Anthony as a prime minister in denial—of economic crisis, of overwhelming crime, of squandered millions, of enacted bad laws and “the bitterness introduced” by them—a dripping Vaughan Lewis had sung his praises and embraced him on the
rain-soaked steps of the Castries market. Evidently it had mattered not, neither to Kenny Anthony nor to the latest convert to the politics of denial, that the product of their earlier hate mongering would in consequence immediately be rendered more hateful and cynical by the demonstrated easy conversion of their respective leaders to the religion of hypocrisy and expedience. Of course there had been other automatic converts before Lewis.
And now it seems the time has come for the largest inhabitants of our political pond to contribute to the choking miasma. (When I reminded a barely interested press colleague of Kenny Anthony’s two-year campaign to force Stephenson King to dump Ausbert d’Auvergne, this was her response: “Isn’t that what signing the Code of Behavior was all about? Forget the past and move on?”)
Silly me! I had earlier imagined the ritual signing of the Code was indicative of an undertaking, however insincere, not to behave as our politicians and their respective supporters normally behave toward one another. I had imagined the idea was to discourage such breeches as were likely to result in bloodshed. Not for a moment had I ever suspected the Code of Behavior was intended as a dry-land substitute for the famous amnestic water under the bridge.
If my press colleague is to be believed, it would explain why throughout this election campaign—and with accommodating media silence—Kenny Anthony has said not a word about Ausbert d’Auvergne that might’ve discouraged voters from electing him to a seat in parliament, and thereby affording him another opportunity to hold one or more of the several portfolios he had held before he and the Stephenson King administration parted company. It should be remembered that
during d’Auvergne’s shortened spell as senator, the opposition leader had excoriated (to use a favorite Kennyword) him on a daily basis, whether in countless newspaper interviews or in press releases from party headquarters.
On at least two occasions, d’Auvergne had threatened to sue over references to his or his wife’s alleged involvement in the government’s purchase of the Daher Building. There were other allegations from Kenny Anthony’s platform that linked d’Auvergne with a notorious convicted international drug baron, to money-laundering scams and other felonious activities. For my own association with d’Auvergne and for my stubborn refusal to assist in his attempted crucifixion without a shred of supportive evidence, I, too, was subjected to merciless Red Zone attacks.
So, has Kenny Anthony apologized to d’Auvergne for all he said of the then senator in his quest to embarrass Stephenson King and regain power? Was the earlier cited symbolic kissy-kissying undertaken in the best interests of Kenny
Anthony’s latest campaign? Might that explain d’Auvergne’s welcomed remarks on Grynberg? And if indeed Kenny and d’Auvergne—both of whom had had their turns before commissions of inquiry that burned them for the same reasons!—agreed to kiss and make up on the Machiavellian premise that the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend (the enemy being Richard Frederick-Stephenson King) shouldn’t the electorate be told the truth? Or have certain parties decided to come together in their own selfish interests, regardless of the eventual cost to the nation?
As I say, it is quite possible that the kissy-kissying I thought I saw on TV signaled something else: after all, there is little Kenny Anthony can say to, or about, Ausbert d’Auvergne today without the risk of Ausbert reminding him that they are peas of the same pod, one pot calling the other black. Blom-Cooper and Ramsahoye would surely agree.
I started this piece thinking about the river of oblivion. But there is another, and if you should sit by it long enough, says Sun Tzu, author of the Art of War, “you will see the body of your enemy floating by.”
The electorate has been sitting a long time at the river’s mouth!
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