[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he statement has been attributed to at least seven sources, among them Beatrice Hall and Voltaire, but obviously neither that nor time has diluted its potency: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Whether moved by Hall or Voltaire, former prime minister Kenny Anthony recently let it be known via press release that he intended to stand by two of his constituents whom the police had reportedly arrested for their use of vulgar language on Facebook. Apocryphal reports also suggest he plans only to encourage others to start a defense fund in the name of the two suspects. That the reported vulgarity was spewed via Facebook at Allen Chastanet has led some to conclude the prime minister ordered the police action. (As far as I’ve been able to discover, Facebook discourages libelous statements as well as pornographic material. I’ve not been able to determine the company’s position on so-called obscene words.) Nevertheless, Anthony is quoted online as having said: “It is simply wrong to use police officers to intimidate those who for one reason or another engage in political dissent by criticizing the UWP leader and the ministers of his government. Citizens should be free to disagree with the government and to speak out about the neglect and difficulties currently being faced in the country.”
A small digression: I was still a California resident in 1972 when I came home on vacation, only to become embroiled in an incident that had its genesis in the attempted arrest of a young woman in William Peter Boulevard one Saturday morning. A sometime model in the UK, she had recently returned with her husband to their native Saint Lucia. By the police officer’s measure her crochet dress by legendary designer Mary Quant exposed more female flesh than is permissible under the laws of our famously Christian country. Actually, the lady was also wearing an opaque bodysuit that matched her skin tone. The officer had imagined what he saw through her crocheted outer garment was the perceived root cause of all male perversion!
It proved a bad day for the cop. By the time he realized he had allowed his imagination to blind him, a crowd had gathered in support of the relatively tiny but feisty young woman who refused to permit herself to be abused by a police officer over six feet tall and who outweighed her by close to 200 pounds, at a guess. Many in the hostile crowd openly referred to him as “a bullying faggot.” He finally released his grip on the lady’s bare upper arm, demonstrably embarrassed.
I decided to write about the incident for publication in a local newspaper. But before I sat down at my typewriter, I undertook some research. The first thing I learned was that a couple weeks or so prior to my arrival, the good citizens of Castries (you may rest assured they were not regular guys) had complained about tourists shopping near naked in swimsuits and other apparel that insinuated body areas normally uncovered only after sunset. The day’s mayor, Julian Hunte, like any politician with his eyes on the prize, had heeded the cries of shocked Central Castries and issued a public statement regarding appropriate street clothes. I was unable to discover why the mayor had not simply had a tête-à-tête with the few hotel owners of the day, so that they, in turn, could have warned visitors about the native attitude toward undulating female flesh.
I learned that what was, or was not, decent in the eyes of the law was undefined. It was up to police on patrol to protect holy Saint Lucian sensibilities; whether a lady’s skirt was too short; whether her blouse exposed too much cleavage; how much her shorts left to the imagination. Whose imagination? I found nothing on our statute books that addressed my question. And none of the people I asked was ready to enlighten me.
Someone gently reminded me that while the police are authorized to detain offenders of the non-existent dress code, it was up to the courts to uphold or dismiss their charges. Woe betide a pretty young thing should her judge turn out to be a corseted member of some religious organization that blames rape on the way a woman walks, the length of her skirt or whether she was at the time of the reported assault wearing a push-up bra!
But back to free speech. Consider the following by ACLU director Steven Shapiro in relation to Synder v Phelps, which came before the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010: “The First Amendment was designed really to protect a debate at the fringes. You don’t need the courts to protect speech that everybody agrees with, because that speech will be tolerated. You need a First Amendment to protect speech that people regard as intolerable or outrageous or offensive—because that is when the majority will wield its power to censor or suppress, and we have a First Amendment to prevent the government from doing that.”
If indeed Kenny Anthony is serious about defending his two potty-mouthed constituents before a magistrate, then goody goody for him. I, for one, would love to hear a prosecutor say in court what words are protected by our laws and those that can turn a simple statement into something obscene. I am looking forward to hearing the definition of “obscene” by someone from the DPP’s office with time on his or her hands. Might he say, as did Justice Potter Stuart in a matter involving Hustler’s Larry Flynt: “I may not be able to define obscene but I know it when I see [or hear or read] it!”? Keeping in mind the chimes of our time, when a President of the United States can publicly declare certain countries “shit holes” and brag about his propensity for grabbing women “by the pussy,” should we be wasting scarce public funds on often adjourned trials involving so-called foul language and what locally are considered “choo-mama cases”—especially when we are burdened with countless unresolved homicides, rapes and other serious crimes? Would it not serve better to teach our young people the difference between adjectives and expletives?
The former prime minister has boasted about his enviable record as a fearless defender of free speech, offering as proof his assertion that no government has issued as many licenses to radio and TV operators as he had in his time. Of course he neglected to say whether by coincidence the lucky applicants were well known supporters of a particular political organization.
This same prime minister had placed on our statute books a law that would sentence to two years hard labour any broadcaster or journalist who published a story about the existence of, say, Ebola in Saint Lucia—unless he could prove his story true in every detail. The law was later repealed upon the prime minister’s late discovery that it was not prosecutable.
The free-speech leader of government had also booted out of his Cabinet a lady MP whom he said had gone too far with her expressed condemnation of an abortion bill during a House debate. Despite House rules that forbid MPs from speaking against private individuals not in a position to defend themselves, the prime minister had implied a Catholic priest’s criticism of the same bill was actually hypocritical, self-serving and partisan. And then there were the three senators he dumped after they spoke against a government bill that sought to guarantee a $4 million bank loan for a bankrupt local airline.
Former prime ministers Vaughan Lewis and Sir John Compton, Peter Josie, Richard Frederick were all served lawsuits after they spoke critically about the free-speech prime minister from their political platforms. I need not mention those who claim they had been advised to sue certain journalists. And now, even as I write, the word on the radio is that the Vieux Fort South MP has threatened a United Workers Party activist with a libel suit for allegedly posting on Facebook that some of what he had said during a Labour Party protest rally last year may have incited anti-social behavior a few weeks later in Soufriere. Let’s hear it for our Number One defender of free speech.
It should be recalled that this is the same individual who, hours after the 2001 general elections, claimed on TV his party’s Mario Michel had a “personality problem” and should take lessons from Lenard Montoute. He took away the tourism portfolio from Philip J. Pierre and handed it to a then 21-year-old Menissa Rambally, because Pierre was “too indecisive.” He suggested from his platform in Gros Islet that all former Labour Party leader Julian Hunte had done for his constituents was provide them with coffins; that he should “quit politics and become a full-time undertaker.”
In the saintly eyes of Kenny Anthony, the late George Odlum was “the Great Satan.” Vaughan Lewis, “Saint Lucia’s worst prime minister and amoral.” As for the late revered Sir John, well, as far as Kenny Anthony was concerned, nearly everyone’s Father of the Nation did not deserve to be addressed as Sir! Then there was the famous party rally outside the Castries market when Timothy Poleon was labeled “a media terrorist!”
Like the man said: What needs always to be protected is speech that the powerful might consider “intolerable, outrageous and offensive.” But then, who knows that better than our first defender of free speech —provided such speech emanates from his mouth!
