STAR Person of the Year!

If you want to lead you must first learn to follow, advised one of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who was among other things also a Freemason and a politician. At Matthew 20:26, the Bible says: “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.” Predictably, whenever the subject of leadership arises both sources are cited (not surprisingly, by individuals determined to discourage over-ambitious notions among their ranks) as if the words of Matthew and Franklin were calculated to convey the same message. It seems to me Matthew was delivering a sermon about humility, while Franklin had his inventor’s mind set on things political. By the way, of the seven key Founding Fathers, two were never elected President—one of whom was Ben Franklin!

Lieutenant General Colin Powell, neither a regular politician nor a biblical figure, is well placed to address the subject under discussion. “Leadership is all about people,” he has written. “It is not about organizations. It is not about plans. It is not about strategies. It is all about people—motivating people to get the job done. You have to be a people motivator.” Which on reflection has me wondering, save for the tax collector turned Christ apostle, why those who speak most eloquently of the rewards from being a follower say not a word, not a word, not a word about the followed. 

Barbara Kellerman is a leadership lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In her book Fellowship: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders, she writes: “Being a good follower means having the courage to dissent if you think your leader, manager, or superior, is doing something wrong-headed. That’s not always easy. It requires the guts and strength of conviction that are essential to good leadership. Being a good follower is complicated in ways that are similar to being a good leader. It means being engaged. It means paying attention. It means having the courage to speak up when something’s wrong and it also means having the energy and activism to support a leader or manager who’s doing things wisely.”

In short: good followers are not sheep, a point that Ronald E. Riggio, associate dean of the faculty at Kravis Leadership Institute in Claremont, California, underscores. “In many business sectors,” he points out, “followers are the ones who are doing much of the creative work, although the leader may get most of the credit. Leaders who have been good followers understand how to work with people to bring out the best in them. Did Steve Jobs really create the IPod and IPhone,” he asks, “or was it the creative collective of team members at Apple?” 

In order to be a good follower you need to be able to think for yourself, adds Riggio. “The best followers support and aid the leader when he or she is doing the right thing, and stand up to the leader when he or she is headed in the wrong direction.”

And so we come to the local politician often curiously referred to by wishful-thinking sections of the media as “the prime minister in waiting,” who in fact is the leader of the House opposition—whatever else might be his shared secret aspirations. As can easily be verified, thanks to countless interviews readily accessible on the Internet,  from Hansard, and other reliable sources, for at least a quarter of a century Philip J. Pierre expressed total satisfaction with being deputy this and deputy that. He took every opportunity also to advertise the virtues associated in certain quarters with being a faithful follower. There is nothing in his record to indicate a boat rocker in his soul. Now that he is campaigning for the opportunity to take this country where it has never been before, some might usefully ask: How much did Pierre learn from walking in the footsteps of others? How effective was he as a follower? Did he follow too closely? How much did he contribute in his follower capacity to the successes or failures of his leader? Did he support him proudly when he did the right thing? Did he “stand up to him when he headed in the wrong direction?”

When it comes to confronting tough decisions, is Philip J. Pierre made of the right stuff? In 1996, following his candidate’s disastrous performance against Vaughan Lewis and George Odlum in the Central Castries by-election, the Labour Party leader Julian Hunte, reacting to voices in his head that warned him treachery was afoot, threw in the towel midway through an emergency meeting convened at party headquarters to determine his immediate future. If by his resignation Hunte hoped to establish his indispensability, then he grossly underestimated the Brutus knives among his executive. For some time they had been meeting surreptitiously with key members of the newly formed Citizens Democratic Party, led by Calixte George, and with a reluctant Kenny Anthony, at the time general counsel of the Caribbean Community Secretariat in Guyana. If Anthony still burned from the war wounds of 1979 that finally had brought about his departure from the fold, Hunte’s unexpected resignation proved the perfect balm.   

It wasn’t long before the St. Lucia Labour Party was bragging about the virtues of the heir apparent that some in the UWP ridiculed as the SLP’s “great white hopeless,” notwithstanding his impressive academic accomplishments. What the Labour hotshots kept to themselves was that Anthony’s acceptance of their gift was conditional: he would go through the motions of contesting for the party’s premier position—but only if he had no challengers. Also, that in the event the SLP won the 1997 general elections the CDP leader would be deputy prime minister. Fellow CDP member Lawson Calderon would head a “super ministry” with responsibility for foreign affairs, trade, and tourism. Even the best-laid plans sometimes go up in smoke, especially when they depend on voter attitude. No matter, Pierre alone knows why he considered Kenny Anthony better qualified to lead than he who was party chairman at the time of the big walkout. The CDP frontmen had one thing in common: all were disgruntled former members of the Labour Party under Julian Hunte. 

Despite that he was demonstrably underestimated by the new leader, Pierre contested the ’97 elections against Romanus Lansiquot— arguably the toughest candidate on the UWP slate. If his party colleagues believed they were throwing him to the wolves, so to speak, they had good reason to think again when Pierre not only won the Castries East seat by over a thousand votes but he also topped the polls. The SLP won 16 of the 17 constituencies in contention. We may well ask, considering the existing mood for change, would the result have been different with Pierre leading? Better to ask why he chose instead to follow someone with no experience as an election candidate and with a propensity for deserting the troops in his own best interests. Pierre, on the other hand, had crossed swords with Lansiquot and learned much from the experience. 

In the aftermath of the 2001 general elections, when even his staunchest supporters sensed the electorate was growing weary of Kenny Anthony’s leadership, I suggested to Pierre it might be the right time to start positioning himself to take over. Nothing could’ve been further from his mind, I hasten to add. No matter it was obvious his leader considered others better placed to succeed him if and when he chose to call it a day. Then came his party’s loss to Allen Chastanet—11-6. No need to wade again in the swamp that was the political scene between 2011 and 2016. Most readers will remember too well the period to require reminders. Suffice it to say the election further proved the Kenny magic of 1997 was no more. Even the presumed magician must’ve recognized the truth. Shortly after his party’s loss in 2016 Kenny Anthony stepped down from the party leadership, as he should’ve several years earlier in favor of Mario Michel. With Michel having left the building to return to his law career, and with Pierre being the party’s first deputy, he was elected leader without opposition, as has been the custom since 1996.

Would Pierre have caved in had, say, Ernest Hilaire or Alva Baptiste decided to seek election to the vacated position? Would Pierre have encouraged his colleagues to bring it on? Or would he have meekly stepped aside rather than risk humiliation? Pierre alone knows. But then, how many times has Pierre answered important questions with: “I dunno, I dunno, I dunno!” Indeed, not knowing what he is expected to know seems not to concern him. Or it may be it provides refuge. Asked by a reporter at a 2019 party press conference if he intended to investigate the mysteries of Grynberg should he find himself prime minister following the next general elections, his response was unambiguous: There will be no such investigation under his administration. If his reaction was unsettling, it also was self-serving: Any such probe would bring into sharp focus the inconvenient fact that Pierre and his Cabinet colleagues knew absolutely nothing of the Grynberg oil deal of 2000 until nine years after it had been struck, signed by the prime minister and the notorious American oilman. More of that in due course!

It remains now to offer congratulations to the perennial follower on his recent demonstration of leadership courage. While his party adheres to the notion of political opposition as war—and opponents as enemies to be destroyed—Philip J. Pierre has recently been permitting us glimpses of the MLK in his soul. Via Facebook, he has urged party supporters to lay down their arms and instead engage their minds. “While I encourage you to express your political views via this forum,” he wrote, “I wish to inform everyone to make their points without expletives or distasteful comments. I know many of you are disgruntled with the Allen Chastanet-led government but I am asking you to desist from using abusive and threatening language. No matter one’s political affiliation, at the end of the day we are all Saint Lucians.” 

That’s a long way from the usual racist slurs normally hurled by the prime minister’s detractors; a far distance from threats against Allen Chastanet and his family. If Pierre’s words mean anything to the party he now leads, the rest of Saint Lucia may in consequence have good reason to look forward to an incident-free general election after all, without threats, without violence, at a time when it seems too many are determined to demonstrate how angry they can get, with or without cause. (Hopefully the mercenaries referenced by Pierre’s deputy at the time of the recent Dominica elections have returned to base with no return tickets!)

In his circumstances, when it seems so many around him are losing their heads and blaming their problems on everyone else, what a relief that Philip J. Pierre seems to have discovered the courage to trust himself and keep his head, to bastardize Rudyard Kipling. We can think of no better reason for declaring the leader of the House opposition STAR Person of the Year!