‘Don’t Do It Or You’ll Pay The Price. I Will Make Sure That You Reap The Whirlwind Of Your Actions!’
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he year was 2006. Election fever ruled the wind. Already the independent Richard Frederick’s by-election victory against the SLP’s sitting attorney general Victor LaCorbiniere (anticipated by all save KDA & Company) had signaled disaster for the red brigade—forced them to apologize from the steps of the Castries market to long neglected CDC residents. As for the shell-shocked prime minister and party leader, it must’ve seemed to him that regardless of how much devil paint he and his apostles hurled at “the worst prospect confronting Saint Lucian politics” the more voters treated him as their knight in shining armor—as indeed the whole island had treated the 1997 Kenny Anthony.
And then it happened: shortly before the general elections, as the two men were exiting the National Insurance Corporation’s conference center at the conclusion of a parliamentary session (the regular House was undergoing much needed repairs) STAR reporter Nicole McDonald suggested to the prime minister that it might make a great picture if he forgot their troubles for a minute and shook hands with the painted monster of his campaign speeches.
The reporter’s request was as a match to an open gas tank. “Never!” he exploded. “Shake hands with Richard Frederick? Never.” Turning from McDonald to his creation, he said: “Richard, I’ll never forget what you said about me: You called me corrupt.”
A smiling Frederick, still aglowing from his recent by-election victory, countered: “Oh, but I never once mentioned your name.” Nevertheless the prime minister acquiesced to the reporter’s request. “Richard, I might shake your hand,” he grumbled, “but I’ll never forget you said I am corrupt!”
“And I’ll never forget you referred to me as a frightening prospect,” Frederick fired back. The prime minister corrected him: “You are a frightening development. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”
“And you know that I know what you know that I know!” Frederick chuckled.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s camera was clicking away. When finally she and Frederick were alone the reporter asked him to explain his obviously spiked retort. “All you need to know is this,” he grinned, his bejeweled right hand on the reporter’s shoulder. “I have ways of dealing with any blows Kenny might aim at me.”
In due course the prime minister was invited by Newsspin’s Timothy Poleon to reveal what was behind that “you know that I know” rat-tat-tat exchange. He confirmed that he still considered Frederick a frightening prospect, never mind they had pressed the flesh under pressure. However, he was amazed that so much had been read into the incident. He attempted a whitewash. “When we are training our new candidates for this general election,” he laughed, “I will use it to illustrate the point that what is conveyed may not be what was intended.”
Not long afterward Richard Frederick was a guest on a TV showed called “Townhall Tuesday.” (Or was it Wednesday?) In any event, the call-in program was hosted by a part-time comedian named Christopher Hunte. When he suggested his guest reveal what it was he knew that Kenny Anthony knew, Frederick acknowledged he had read the prime minister’s self-serving response in the STAR and then proceeded to reveal what he claimed was the truth. He told a helluva story; one I dare not risk repeating here, keeping in mind the time of our time. Suffice it to say I fully expected to hear about a slander suit the next day. The host must’ve been similarly blindsided. Seconds before the program ended he promised to invite the island’s prime minister the following Tuesday, “so we can clear the air.” Alas, Frederick had the last word on the issue. The promised appearance never materialized, leading to popular speculation about a Mexican stand-off, with no strategy that might permit either of the men to emerge victorious!
And so we come to the now former prime minister’s cryptic remark at his most recent House appearance, in response to Allen Chastanet’s promise to clear the “suffocating smoke” around the perplexing issue of Grynberg: “What I promise the minister of finance is this,” he said, wagging his index finger.
“When he embarks on whatever action he embarks, I will make sure he reaps the whirlwind of his actions!” An obvious threat, yes, but what could the Vieux Fort South MP possibly have meant to convey to the nation and the world via radio, TV and the Internet? Not forgetting his precious Facebook followers.
Lately he’d been tossing some pretty disturbing lines from the privileged House as well as from his public platforms. Once he announced that he and his party had declared war on Allen Chastanet and his father. He had also promised the prime minister would “feel the wrath of the people of Vieux Fort North and South” if he laid a finger on the declared architectural disaster misnamed St. Jude Hospital. Then it was “we will fight you in the street, we will fight you wherever you are . . .”
(a screwed-up version of Churchill’s legendary speech, delivered to the House of Commons in 1940). The image Kenny Anthony conjured was an affronted Zeus throwing tantrums and spitting thunderbolts at over-ambitious lesser mortals. Small wonder reporters could hardly wait to hear more about his reaction to Allen Chastanet’s promised investigation of Grynberg.
Alas, what they encountered at the SLP’s most recent press conference (which he promised would be his last) was a flaccid version of what they had seen at the most recent budget debate. All he was prepared to add to his “whirlwind” remark was: “Simply, it means that all the legal options available to me will be exercised and, further, that any prime minister that believes he can pursue persons with impunity then so he must bear the consequences of his own actions . . .” All of that because Allen Chastanet had expressed his government’s intention to get to the bottom of Grynberg, details of which are known only to an American oil speculator of ill repute and the former prime minister? Anthony’s response three weeks ago was as baffling to reporters and the recalled SLP conference as was his angry “you know that I know what you know that I know” exchange with Richard Frederick in its time.
And now all eyes are on Allen Chastanet, as the nation wonders what the Vieux Fort South MP may be holding over the prime minister’s head that could deter him from delivering on his 2016 election pledge to explore certain identified “events in public administration in Saint Lucia”—to borrow Blom-Cooper’s phrase—in particular government’s disastrous oil deal with Jack Grynberg. I need also remind readers that even some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters believe he is uncharacteristically kind to Vladimir Putin only because he is in possession of a particularly embarrassing dossier on the President of the United States!
