Religious fantasists share a preoccupation with “the Last Days,” synonymous, they faithfully insist, with the rise of ubiquitous antichrists and the trampling underfoot of all things Jerusalem. Also with wars and rumors of wars. Politicians also speak of their own peculiar last days as a time of miracles and wonder, when the previously impossible abruptly becomes commonplace; when earlier impassable roads are transformed almost overnight into bump-free thoroughfares, and geeks bearing gifts take up more or less permanent residence among the most deprived. Snake oil salesmen morph in a flash into low-rent philanthropists and providers of coffins for even the healthy, regularly buying up for obvious alcoholics everything available at off the beaten track watering holes while promising more generosities to come after they’ve been elected to office.
Regular citizens of simply beautiful Saint Lucia have long grown accustomed to seeing in the last days before elections presumed sworn enemies, declared sexual deviants, robbers of the poor, and sundry haughty abusers of public office making whoopee, arm in arm and belly to beer belly. What’s at play is not so much Machiavelli’s “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle as the forgive and forget (for the time being) syndrome. Whatever had rendered friends political enemies and vice versa is never really out of mind, only out of voter view.
Then again, keeping in mind the scriptural pronouncements about the last days, was anyone surprised in 2016 when the ONE man abruptly showed up as one of the soldiers sworn to make war against Allen Chastanet and his father Michael? Or when a psychically bruised and battered political Vaughan Lewis deserted the hand that fed him to wax dithyrambic from the steps of the Castries market about Kenny Anthony’s recently uncovered virtues?
Left behind in the fabled water under the bridge was the sticky mud slung at him by the leader of the Labour Party including this passage from his book At the Rainbow’s Edge: “Time has shown that the UWP has changed since the advent of Vaughan Lewis. But it is clearly a change for the worse. Never before have we seen such vindictiveness, such narrow-mindedness, such pedigreed arrogance . . . Many had hoped that the entry of Vaughan Lewis into the political arena would have signaled a higher level of public morality . . . There were some who thought he would’ve attempted to clean the rot, cut the patronage and excise corruption. Instead of rising to his historic opportunity, Vaughan Lewis sank to the lowest common moral and intellectual denominator. Even John Compton at his worst moments never sank so low . . .” By Kenny Anthony’s recorded assessment Lewis was “the worst prime minister” ever to hold office in Saint Lucia. Never mind he served for only one year!
There was also the matter of a slander lawsuit successfully filed against Lewis that required him to pay damages and costs to Kenny Anthony amounting to some $50,000. Nevertheless the earlier well-respected Lewis would in due course appear to endorse all that had been broadcast to the world about his character and his abilities. A hairy plastic smile was not nearly covering for his embarrassment as he begged his market steps audience not to take seriously in the season of elections what men did to or said of one another—presumably including paying through the teeth on occasion. Conceivably, Lewis expected to be rewarded immediately with the collective warm embrace of the thousands who had never actually met him but had been taught by a certain former school principal to hate him. With a passion!
What was politics finally if not the art of the possible? Pragmatism over ideology! At his 2006 sloughing on the steps of the Castries market Lewis not only forgave those who had flushed his reputation down the toilet and made him a laughingstock island-wide, but he also publicly owned up to his own wimpy raids on Kenny Anthony’s good name. What mattered, he said, was that he and his archenemy turned crumbs dispenser had decided for the greater good to bury their hatchets, conceivably in the back of their ailing common enemy John Compton.
The late George Odlum got his, coming and going. To borrow the telling prose of Kenny Anthony, at page 20 of his earlier cited book: “I have to address a factor that the United Workers Party has been making a lot of noise about lately, the so-called ‘George Odlum Factor.’ The Flambeaus have claimed that George Odlum is a danger to Saint Lucia because he is violent and hungry for power and that he is a danger to the Labour Party because he is hungry for the leadership of the party. In recent times no politician has been as maligned as George Odlum. Despite the abuse, despite the provocation, he has stood his ground in defense of the new St. Lucia Labour Party. What more can you expect of any man? The 1997 George Odlum is an integrated member of the SLP, working hand in glove with other members to achieve a goal the entire party desires.”
Alas, a few pages later, by which point he has been expunged from the SLP and formed with others another political party, this is how Odlum is pictured: “The story of the Alliance is nothing more than the most sordid chapter in the history of exploitation of the sensitivity of the Saint Lucian masses. It is sad because it represented an attempt to perpetuate the greatest political fraud on Saint Lucians. They are the most isolated, most backward, the most greedy elements of the Saint Lucia bourgeoisie. They are those pedigreed by birth and by power. These charlatans believe they alone have a divine right to rule and to control. They are those whose wealth and position are dependent not on special ability but on having the access and influence to make things happen their way . . . In Odlum they found a willing accomplice, a willing instrument of evil, so infected with ‘prime ministeritis’ that he could not distinguish between right and wrong.” A change dimensionally equal to what came over Saul on the road to Damascus.
Kenny Anthony explained in typical style the transformation on page 374 of his book: At the time he showered Odlum with buckets of fulsome praise. Odlum “had not yet been accepted back into the Labour Party, given the strong level of suspicion toward him due to his role in the downfall of the 1979-82 SLP administration.” The book offers no comment on Odlum’s turning into a “willing accomplice, the willing instrument of evil” incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Neither is a reason given for renaming him “The Great Satan!”
Shortly following the June 2016 general elections the defeated Saint Lucia Labour Party handed control of its future to Philip J. Pierre. Last Sunday he set out to prove to the troops he was made of stuff at least as stern as his predecessor Kenny Anthony. Which might explain why he leaned so heavily on words and notions indelibly associated with Kenny Anthony at his most beguiling.
He referred to the current prime minister as Saint Lucia’s worst, echoing the 1997 Kenny Anthony’s recorded estimation of Vaughan Lewis. Over and over Pierre referred to the present government’s “vindictiveness,” as had Kenny Anthony in opposition to Vaughan Lewis. Pierre informed his audience on Sunday that come the next general elections he anticipated the other side would offer money in exchange for votes, reminiscent of Kenny Anthony when he claimed to have evidence the United Workers Party had engaged in cash for votes deals on Polling Day 2016.
“Take the money,” Pierre shouted on Sunday, “take the money and vote for Labour.” (Isn’t there an election law against politicians paying for votes? Doesn’t the law speak of fines and disfranchisement? How ironic that the SLP leader should publicly offer his followers such risky encouragement—especially when he has been promising, if elected to office, to enact anti-corruption legislation!)
Another mindbender: With Sunday’s rally being covered by local television and also accessible on Facebook, Pierre introduced his party’s latest big catch, Keith Mondesir. To most Saint Lucians he is “Mondayzod”—a Kwéyòl play on his real name, indicative of his image as a pointless noise maker. But what Mondesir is perhaps best known for was his near silence on his work history in Canada. Then there’s the local matter that landed him before a judge back in 2009.
The man who put him before Justice Brian Cottle sat conspicuously a few feet away from the lectern at last Sunday’s gathering. His charge was that in 2007, while Mondesir was a Cabinet minister and operator of a small hotel, he received concessions from fellow Cabinet colleagues to which he was not legally entitled. To quote directly from Justice Brian Cottle’s judgment: Acting under a Cabinet Conclusion “Minister Mondesir imported certain goods and electronic equipment. Some of the goods were unloaded at a house in Bonne Terre about one mile away from the main business operation of Tuxedo Villas. That main operation is in Rodney Bay. It consists of ten villas and a restaurant. The officials of the Customs Department became suspicious. They investigated. They discovered that a 20-foot container of household items consigned to Tuxedo Villas of Rodney Bay was being unloaded at a house in Bonne Terre. The surveillance officer observed items of furniture assembled and installed at the Bonne Terre house. He saw Minister Mondesir sitting on some of the furniture on the patio of the Bonne Terre house. The comptroller of customs enquired of Minister Mondesir who explained that the house at Bonne Terre was in fact part of the Tuxedo Villas hotel, despite the distance that separated the two locations. The comptroller of customs was not satisfied. He wrote to the minister . . .”
As for the claimant, at the time House opposition leader, and still according to Justice Cottle’s judgment, “he seeks to have the [Cabinet] decision quashed on the basis that it is unreasonable, arbitrary, irrational and perverse and was made in bad faith. He seeks an order directing the defendant to revoke the decision and conclusion of the Cabinet.” Before turning to Justice Cottle’s judicial hearing, the claimant had sought the intervention of the attorney general, to small avail.
After hearing from witnesses including the tourism minister Allen Chastanet, Mondesir and the clerk of Cabinet—the attorney general failed to show up—the judge granted the order “quashing the decision of the Cabinet and Cabinet Conclusion 574 (c) of 2008, date 29 June 2008 as unreasonable in the sense that no reasonable grounds have been shown upon which Cabinet could have arrived at the decision at which it arrived.” He ordered Mondesir to pay the claimant’s costs “in the prescribed claim of $14,000.” As usual, Dominica’s Anthony Astaphan SC had represented the claimant Kenny Anthony.
As earlier noted, on Sunday it fell to SLP leader Philip J. Pierre to paint in Jesus colors the man his party had on countless occasions declared a chronic prevaricator, an abuser of his office and altogether unworthy of holding a seat in parliament. Sitting a few feet away from Pierre as he delivered his words of welcome was Keith Mondesir’s main accuser, arms folded on his gut. Having embraced the new brother, Pierre announced the coming of a hundred or so unidentified members of the former House of Mondesir—the UWP. He neglected to say whether those who had committed to following Mondayzod were similarly burdened.
This witness could not avoid recalling last December, when it seemed Pierre had been led to believe Saint Lucia would have a new prime minister before Christmas, so strongly that he presented a Motion of No Confidence in the prime minister, allegedly based on the commitments of at least four on the government side to desert their bird in hand in favor of two in the bush. But then things could prove different this time around—with Pierre himself openly leading the charge.
Of course the man of the moment would be allotted time at the microphone to make his own kind of noise. As if already he were not too famous for his own good—and had not a long time ago carved in the annals of local political history his own unique niche—Mondayzod began with the obvious: “Many of you will wonder why I am here, and I have to explain to you. I came into politics in 2001. I was brought into politics by the late George Odlum. I joined the Alliance because I believed in the concept of the Alliance. The concept was to take the best men and women of a country, put them together, and have them rule.”
To put it as kindly as I can, Keith Mondesir was not nearly the Mondayzod of yore, when the fire in his belly as real, not imagined. That is to say, up to 2000-2001 when the Alliance group was prematurely delivered and died. The sound that came out of the speakers was shaky, weak, unnecessarily proving again that age is definitely not a beach. Alas space does not permit me on this occasion a full analysis of all he recalled, however twisted. Suffice it to say Mondesir’s take on “the concept” of the Alliance, as well as his estimation of himself, George Odlum and other members as “the best men and women of the country” in no way harmonizes with that of Kenny Anthony—to whose book we return once more, at page 85: “This group of concerned citizens are the most isolated, most backward, the most greedy elements of the St. Lucian bourgeoise . . . These charlatans believe they alone have a divine right to rule and to control . . . They are concerned only about their wealth, power and position.”
Before returning head bowed to his seat the red-shirted Mondesir issued several statements that were at once pathetic, contradictory and contrary to recorded facts. Alas, whether his lapses and infelicities were calculated remains conjectural. It certainly stood out that he forgot the leading figures onstage with him had conspired with Kenny Anthony to kick Odlum out of the Cabinet because of his involvement in the Alliance. Also that their Tuxedo Villas charges had indelibly stamped him as irreversibly soiled goods!
