Is St. Lucia’s Miami-based Consul General Another Casualty of the Silly Season?

Maybe it has something to do with the way they tend to dismiss the female voice, especially when the topic is related, even vaguely, to local politics. Experience has taught me to be particularly suspicious of men who attempt to project sensitivity by spewing lines borrowed from such no-nonsense warriors as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni, and Kathleen Cleaver.

Recently it was the turn of silver tongued and golden slippered Darrel Montrope to deliver a shameless panegyric for the leader of the St. Lucia Labour Party, self-declared “man of mystery” Philip J. Pierre, on whom Montrope depends for his honeyed whole wheat toast and old-moneyed-Miami lifestyle.

No surprise that he sought to use as his human shield one of the most revered civil rights figures, close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, universally appreciated for her direct activism and the way her writing powerfully explores themes of racism, social justice, strength and resilience—the singular Maya Angelou, who, despite “nights of terror and fear” could, by her own Still I Rise account, “dance like I’ve got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs.”

This was Montrope’s opening shot, fired from behind the poet’s skirts: “Maya Angelou advises that when people tell and show you who they are, you should believe them. Over the years, in their public and political lives, Philip J. Pierre and Allen Chastanet have both demonstrated who they are. You should therefore believe them.”

It says much about Montrope’s immeasurable arrogance, his self-importance, that he dared to rewrite Maya Angelou. In the process, he ripped the heart out of the poet’s message by dropping three all-important words from her last line (“the first time”).  

Ingratitude is another of Montrope’s flaunted characteristics. Consider the lifestyle he enjoys at public expense. By reliable account, on top of his monthly two salaries (local and overseas) as Consul General, Montrope receives from over-burdened taxpayers an allowance of around US$10,000 for phone, clothing, transportation, chauffeur and entertainment.   

According to Chamber of Commerce sources, Coral Gables, Montrope’s current home away from home, is an affluent, historically significant city in Miami-Dade County, noted for its Mediterranean architecture and vibrant mix of residents. Founded in 1920 as one of the first-planned communities in the U.S., Coral Gables remains one of Miami’s most desirable locations—”with a reputation for luxury, cultural riches, and prominent residents including successful professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, academics and families—many drawn by the high quality of life—and showbiz celebrities.”

The city’s population is predominantly white (53.4%), with 3.8% black. For the player that he appears to be (a perception encouraged by the countless Facebook pictures that feature him with friends in party mode), Coral Gables offers a lifestyle to kill for. Way above the standards available to his ICE-dodging brothers and sisters in Overtown and Little Haiti, as well as his unlucky out of sight, out of mind former schoolmates in Saint Lucia. A not so traveled small-island boy might easily become enslaved by the seductions of Coral Gables.

All of which might explain why our Consul General would, tail held high in the air, stoop as low as he did the other day, in the best interests of his boss and their party that advertises itself as socialist while its more privileged members enjoy an existence normally associated with much despised “capitalist pigs.”

Montrope’s most recent article, published by STAR online, featured this revealing  headline: The Better and Safer Choice: PJP. Cute, you say? Maybe. But better for whom? Definitely not for the majority of Montrope’s “comrades” who in two weeks will likely cast their ballots for the party that affords elites such as Darrel Montrope the coveted opportunity to imitate the movie star lifestyle.  

Right-thinking but broke fellow citizens might well ask: What exactly does Montrope do in Coral Gables for debt-burdened Saint Lucia? His advertisement for Philip Pierre offered not a single clue. Perhaps Montrope was too busy researching lines by Allen Chastanet malleable enough to be twisted in the best interests of his boss—and Montrope’s own lucrative career. 

And so, while concerned citizens are denied an account of what Montrope does for the money we splurge on him, money our country can ill-afford, we get a bellyful of ad hominems intended to belittle Allen Chastanet in the eyes of the electorate.

It’s as if the Consular General had sat down with Papa Vader and rewritten the calypsonian’s inadvertent paean to the UWP leader. “Allen Do Dis . . . Allen Do Dat . . . Allen Do Dis . . .” Remember? Only now it’s    “Chastanet Say Dis, Pierre Say Dat . . . Allen Chastanet Say Dis . . . PJP Say Dat . . .”—the obvious intention being to miraculously paint Pierre to appear a whole lot wiser than he’s demonstrated in more than a quarter century as a politician.  

Even in the silly season, taxpayers deserve better from over-paid party surrogates disguised as government officials. Especially those entrusted with the job of representing—regardless of affiliation—all of the people of Saint Lucia, our shared island home that also produced two Nobel winners, one for English literature, the other for development economics: Derek Walcott and Arthur Lewis. How sad that Darrel Montrope chose to spit as he did on the grave of Mya Angelou!