Considering how much meaning has been attached to the gesture, it’s remarkable how little it says about the nature of man. While a handshake can close deals, say hello or good-bye, seal promises, it suggests little more than that hand shakers tend to be gregarious, love to socialize, are chatty, enjoy external stimulation and interaction. At any rate, so say several ostensible students of human behavior.
There is ample evidence that a handshake is no guarantee of love or friendship. Or that it can be used as a distraction, a signal, a tool to disguise bad intentions. Consider the well-chronicled occasions when some of the most powerful world leaders were photographed pressing the flesh and smiling from ear to there in the blessed presence of trusted evangelicals and other wealthy promoters of Peace and Love—conceivably God’s failsafe deterrent to war, hunger, galloping crime, poverty, various abuses of women and children, and other inhumanities to man.
Less than a year after a British prime minister Chamberlain was photographed pumping hands with Adolf Hitler their respective countries were engaged in a war described as “the deadliest conflict in human history,” with military and civilian casualties estimated at 70 to 85 million. Then there’s Ronald Reagan’s Special Envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, captured on film as he pumped Saddam Hussein’s bloody hand in 1983. Who could’ve then imagined future images of a disheveled and filthy Saddam being dragged out like a rat from a hole in the ground by U.S. troops, ultimately to be tried and hanged by his own people, now converts to the American Way.
Recently, God’s lead agent in Saint Lucia delivered at the Gros Islet Catholic church a sermon that centered on the earlier cited divine deterrent to everything wicked and ungodly: Love. During the mass, to which representatives of both political parties had been specially invited, the celebrant suggested it might look good in the eyes of the Lord, not to say set a fine example for ordinary mortals, if congregants, never mind their personal or political differences, would all forget their troubles and shake hands. Conceivably in the best interests of what is summarized in Matthew 22:39 as “the second of the two great commandments”—Love thy neighbor as thyself—most of the congregation appeared to set aside whatever entrenched hatreds they harbored. At any rate, for the duration of the hand-shaking ceremony. Here was a miracle worthy of detailed coverage. Alas, to borrow a line from the former prime minister Kenny Anthony (he was not among the day’s worshippers!): “In politics, anything can happen.”
Evidently no one expected the unexpected. By several publicized accounts, Allen Chastanet, the leader of the House opposition, attempted several times to be neighborly toward the nation’s prime minister, Philip J. Pierre. As many times his efforts at showing some love in the house of God were not-so-subtly rebuffed. Nothing new. It would be difficult to recall a time when the party leaders had discovered common ground. Not when considering the ominous possibilities in relation to post-COVID tourism. Not when the opposition answered the government’s appeal for ideas likely to curb the escalating homicide rate. And certainly not when a certain Mr. Phillippe Martinez turned Saint Lucia’s seldom discussed CIP operations into an international scandal—which may or may not have contributed to the Trump government’s new attitude toward travelers wishing to visit the United States on Saint Lucian passports. (It occurs to me that the wannabe peace maker might’ve had better luck had he invited the party leaders to join him on his altar and there perform as required. But then perhaps the priest was following a divine plan!)
Yessir, what seemed to grab public attention was not so much the deceitful face of sworn enemies shaking hands on the holy orders of a highly decorated priest as that two warring politicians could not bring themselves to participate in a love gesture that may well have been designed also to improve the church’s public image. For several months, regular folk had been pleading with the head of the local Catholic Church and its illegitimate brethren to speak out in protest against the several daily homicides—to no avail. As for Babonneau’s resident rock-star clergyman, Father Albert, he has always sounded far more concerned about the surreptitious proclivities of disguised supernatural baddies among his regular congregations. He preaches incessantly about boloms, gens gagé, chembois, high-priced obeahmen and Haitian-style zombies—topics that, much to the priest’s expressed annoyance, guaranteed him only filled pews. Never filled wallets.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Pierre is off-island, reportedly preoccupied with more pressing matters. No doubt he will be required to press foreign flesh not unlike the opposition leader’s.
A personal note: I’ve known Pip long enough to suggest he is as close to being a germaphobe as I am. Where most people would extend a hand to be squeezed, caressed or grabbed, I’m more likely to voice my thank yous and my so nice to meet yous. It is no accident that the prime minister is often pictured with his wrists crossed at his crotch? His only public comment on the Gros Islet rebuff has been: “Shaking hands is a voluntary thing.” Observers are invited to make of that what they will. And now I’m contemplating the cover of my book, Foolish Virgins, which features Prime Minister Allen Louisy (yes, another Allen!) shaking hands with an over-ambitious radical George Odlum in silhouette. The untold details behind that grab shot amounts to a particularly sad tale about man’s lust for power, more remarkable by far than the Gros Islet episode. Would that our priests could recognize the need to pray Saint Lucia is spared a repetition of what transpired immediately following the strategic gesture of love and unity at Mindoo Phillip Park on a Labor Day back in 1979!
