A media colleague (dare I presume him to be a friend?) called minutes after the prime minister’s televised speech on Monday evening. The leader of the opposition had also addressed the nation several hours earlier—something of an anomaly. The norm is that the opposition reacts to the prime minister or the president’s statement. It also occurs to me that when the President of the United States delivers his State of the Union address, he does so in the presence of Democrats as well as his own party biggies. The British do the same in their peculiar circumstances. Not so in Saint Lucia. When our prime ministers address the nation on TV the custom is for them to stand alone, regardless of the occasion.
The difference on Monday evening was that Prime Minister Allen Chastanet addressed the people on the moment’s hottest issue with his full Cabinet in attendance, several hours after the unaccompanied leader of the opposition. On reflection, it might have said much for unity of purpose had the prime minister and the opposition leader appeared together. The prime minister might’ve spoken first, followed by the opposition leader. Or the prime minister might have read a joint statement. After all, the common concern was the coronavirus. But then our politicians and their respective supporters have always carried on as if they were from different planets, with competing alien agendas. Where local politics and politicians are concerned, well, it is what it is. By which I mean to say, not nearly nice!
But back to that call from my colleague. No commonplace pleasantries from him, no need to introduce himself. He got right down to business. “So, did you have anything to do with your prime minister’s address?” The sarcastic cackle in his voice warned of mischief afoot. Alas, he chose the wrong time. All day long I’d been tuned to sections of our at-home populace via the electronic media, as well as the leading minds of the die-ass-poorer, as they argued about a minister’s choice of words in relation to a Facebook criticism of her political opposite.
My caller was barely into his second sentence when I unleashed my first cluster bomb: What the hell did it matter who wrote the prime minister’s speech? Who cares if he sounded professional, empathetic and all those other words our soi-disant political pundits tend so often to abuse? I kept going, unleashing those bombs for close to five minutes, consciously ignoring my colleague’s efforts at getting a word in edgewise. When somehow he succeeded, he tried to impress upon me how important it was in this particular time that the prime minister “allay the people’s fears, reassure them that there was no cause for panic.” Yes, that bullcrap.
I launched another barrage: “And what do you suppose the prime minister might’ve said that would not be resisted by his political opponents? We both know the prime minister is as clueless as the opposition leader when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus problem. We have no scientists working night and day to find a vaccine. Our CMO, with the best intentions in the world, is in our circumstances little more than a WHO echo. She has no special expertise in relation to COVID-19. She merely passes on the latest word handed from the usual sources, fully expecting to be told the next day something altogether contradictory of the earlier bulletin. Her best advice concerns what we should all have been practicing in normal times: keeping our hands clean, not coughing or sneezing into other people’s faces (it’s bad manners, to begin with!) and so on.”
“Oh, but we could’ve been better prepared,” he said.
“Better prepared for what?” I shouted. “I’m so tired of hearing that line. What does it mean? How do you prepare for an enemy about which you know nothing? Did you hear the latest from the most resourceful country in the world? Did you hear Donald Trump tonight? He’s moved from dismissing the coronavirus as a Chinese-Democrats-Media created ‘hoax’ to admitting COVID-19 is ‘not under control.’ In words more blunt, he finally acknowledged before the whole world that he and his array of experts were no match for the virus!”
“But we prepare for hurricanes,” said my caller.
And I said: “Are you actually borrowing from Allen Chastanet? He, too, equated the virus with a hurricane. Which is absurd. We have a pretty good idea what hurricanes can do, depending on category. We’ve all experienced them first- and second-hand. We’ve dealt with floods and other natural disasters. We have no reliable information on COVID-19. Not even that it was not created in a laboratory. Like the Frankenstein monster. So how do you prepare in such a situation? By buying more toilet paper than usual? Stocking up on suddenly suspect imported rice and frozen fish?”
He started to say something about St. Jude. He didn’t get far. “More mindless political rum talk,” I said. “The smallest city in the United States has a hospital around most corners. Italy, the UK—all have countless well-equipped medical facilities. Fat lot of good that’s done them.”
He persisted: “But we could’ve had a hospital. You know that. If . . .”
“If what?” I interrupted. “It wouldn’t be all that difficult to have twenty hospitals in the next week if we decided to set up tents as was done in Africa at the time of Ebola, in Haiti after every earthquake, and at other scenes of disaster. Any building, any shelter can serve as a hospital if appropriately staffed and furnished. We could overnight convert the Castries cathedral for the life and death interests of the sick. Or we could do with the Daren Sammy stadium as we did with the one in Vieux Fort. But to what avail? The catastrophe we face almost has nothing to do with hospitals. It has everything to do with a killer about which this world knows nothing useful. Preparations for which could amount to no preparation at all.”
We called it a day some time after midnight. At least I got a load off my chest. Hopefully, my colleague (okay, my friend) picked up something useful, at the very least that if somehow we survive the coronavirus but remain attitudinally unchanged politics will do what the disease could not.
I have since revisited the opposition leader’s address, delivered last Sunday, wherein he urged the government “to put together a COVID-19 special task force involving government agencies, the opposition, churches, civil society and health professionals to provide oversight.” He urged all to listen to the chief medical officer, “as she is the authority on such matters at this time. He listed the recommendations he intended to make at a scheduled meeting of the National Emergency Management Advisory Committee. It included travel restrictions, adequately equipped humane quarantine facilities with trained staff and so on. He emphasized the importance of monitoring our ports of entry, advised the use of “appropriate technologies such as infra-red scanning thermometers.” He advised that “cost must not be a determining factor” when it comes to saving lives, that the government should turn to Taiwan for assistance, as well as Cuba.
He would also advise the government to postpone carnival. As for businesses, he recommended “social distancing in their operations.” His party, “being a responsible organization,” had decided to suspend campaign rallies and town-hall meetings. He and his party were “relieved that after being on hold for three years the government may be forced to open the Owen King-EU hospital.” He hoped the government “will commit the necessary funds to acquire in short order more ventilators, respirators and other ICU equipment.”
The opposition leader ended appropriately, albeit atypically, with an appeal to all Saint Lucians to fight together against their common enemy. If much of Philip J. Pierre’s address reminded of stale fish freshly wrapped, no surprise. He had served much of it countless times earlier, at campaign rallies, at rowdy sittings of parliament, in the course of interviews conducted by such as Ras Ipa and Andre Paul.
It was hardly news, what the prime minister said at the start of his address. CMO Sharon Belmar-George had earlier confirmed the presence in Saint Lucia of two imported cases of COVID-19. The prime minister assured the nation that the health ministry had been testing, contact tracing and quarantining where necessary. More stale news: “Due to the novelty” of the disease the government “continued to be guided by the advice and protocols of the World Health Organization and other international agencies.”
Also, “from the start of the outbreak” health ministry officials here, as well as the CMO and the prime minister, had been in constant engagement with representatives of PAHO, CARICOM, the OECS and CARPHA. He listed several initiatives already underway, including meetings with the National Health Security Committee, the ports authority, and health facilities. Restrictions had been placed on persons from Italy, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, and Singapore.
The prime minister announced that he’d had day and night sessions with the finance team on the economic impact and efforts to be made to cushion it. He had “rescheduled the annual Budget presentation as we continue to monitor developments world-wide and dialogue with the Central Bank, the World Bank, the CDB and the IMF.” As if he were addressing new visitors from Jupiter, the prime minister reminded his audience at home and abroad via the Internet that “the virus continues to have impact globally and particularly in Saint Lucia.” He said he’d received notice of the imminent shutting down of three major hotels.
Nevertheless he considered the coronavirus analogous to “an imminent disaster like a hurricane.” Therefore he had “activated the National Emergency Management Advisory Committee, the implementing agency in times of national disaster.” He said, contrary to publicized recent incidents, he was “thankful to the leader of the opposition and the other members of both houses of parliament for their participation in and support of our efforts.”
He heaped praise on the medical community, air- and sea-port personnel, the fire service, the police that have been operating “beyond the call of duty.” Chances are the nation applauded when the prime minister acknowledged the well-appreciated efforts of the CMO in particular and the team she leads.
The prime minister confirmed rumors that all of the island’s schools would be closed and school activities suspended from March 16 until further notice. Cruise ship visits have also been put on hold for “the next 30 days.” Also yachts and other pleasure craft. From March 17 “travel restrictions will be further expanded to mainland China, France, Germany, Spain, Iran and the United Kingdom.” Screening protocols had been “strengthened” at all air- and sea-ports.
“It is easy in uncertain times to fall victim to scaremongering,” said the prime minister. He talked of planned community praying, seemingly oblivious of the fact that churches throughout the world were shutting their doors and advising members to communicate with their respective deities from their own homes.
The inescapable hard truth is, as earlier stated, that we have every good reason to be scared for our own sake and for the lives of our loved ones. We also have good reason to be worried about our livelihoods, whether or not self-employed. Unlike similar addresses in the United States and the U.K., this one promised no relief. Certainly none that the bank or the supermarkets will accept. The prime minister’s speech was predictable; it was neither inspirational nor necessarily discouraging. It reminded of a father landed with the job of telling his young daughters that their mother had died in a car crash. Saint Lucia’s prime minister found himself in the unenviable situation of other leaders at this time, none with a cheerful word for the people they had sworn to protect. But then how do you protect against an evil force that until two months ago was unimaginable?
The address was the best the prime minister could offer in his circumstances. Earlier this week, the Barbados prime minister and current CARICOM head Mia Mottley, in answer to a question from a journalist about actions taken or not taken by member states, responded in effect that there are times when governments must decide in their own interest. She added that while many might consider it vital to suspend cruise ship calls and in other ways discourage visitors, there was no escaping the fact that much of what amounts to life in these islands is connected to things international. In short, life for us still depends to a large extent on, yes, foreigners.
Some have recommended that Saint Lucia’s prime minister declare a state of emergency, whatever that might entail. The next few days will most certainly dictate what we do next. As I write, more bad news continues to pour in from Iran, Australia, the United States and Britain—with no relief in sight. It will take unusual discipline to follow even the hardly earth-shaking recommendations of our CMO and her team. We seem unable, after all these years, even to resist throwing garbage here there and everywhere, including our drains on the eve of the hurricane season.
One thing for certain: We’re all in—and the sooner we accept that as immutable, the better might be our chances of survival!
We end on a positive note. The prime minister has tested negative for COVID-19, according to a press release from his office early Wednesday. On Tuesday, the official word was that he had been feeling out of sorts for a couple days and out of an abundance of caution had decided to self-quarantine. According to overseas news Canada’s prime minister had also self-quarantined this week after his wife had tested positive for the virus. So have other leaders in the UK, Brazil, the Middle East and elsewhere. Living with one foot in the grave may well be the new normal!
