From our launching in 1987 we acknowledged we were not reinventing the wheel, that our criteria for ‘Person of the Year’ coincided with those of the originator. Although Time magazine has always conducted a readers’ poll, the results continue to be inconsequential; unpublished. The final selection by the editors of Time is intended to represent “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”
It turns out the tradition started as ‘Man of the Year’ in 1927, when the image of legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh covered Time’s December issue. The first ‘Person of the Year’ was chosen in 2006. To mark the occasion the magazine’s cover featured a gray patch representative of a mirror, over which was printed in black majuscule letters—“YOU.” Inside the special issue Time’s technology writer and book critic Lev Grossman elaborated: “For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year is You.”
After examining some of the then world, leaders and their respective contributions, Grossman wrote: “Look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world but also change the way the world changes. The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them happen.”
Fifteen years on, it’s easy to dismiss Grossman as starry-eyed and optimistic to a fault. Even in 2006 the writer caught more than his fair share of flack. However, at least one of the reviewers observed Grossman’s cover story had made careful note of the fact that “the mass participation we’re witnessing on a grand scale on the Internet cuts both ways.”
“Sure,” Grossman had also admitted, “it’s a mistake to romanticize all this more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.”
The obscenity and the naked hatred! So much for the web being a tool for bringing millions of people together for positive purpose. Grossman’s 2006 observation brought to mind a Facebook image of two half-naked young boys—it turns out they are brothers—shackled together with iron collars around their necks. Standing tall between them is this island’s prime minister smiling broadly under his sun-resistant straw hat—the mother of all nightmare images that could have proceeded only from a mind warped by congealed self-loathing, indicative of a propensity for unimaginable evil.
When invited to comment on the devil’s digital handiwork, Allen Chastanet’s main concern was for the family whose offspring’s innocence had been brutally raped. It was at their excited mother’s request the prime minister had stopped so she might picture him with her sons at the inaugural 2019 National Day horse races. Who knew the happy result would somehow find its way to the devil’s workshop to be transmogrified into something beyond repugnant?
COVID-19 has had no salutary impact on the insomnious incubuses of the Internet. At a time when the immediate future of our country depends on vital information reaching its citizens, some are busy targeting our less educated, more deprived and vulnerable for their repulsive and confusing messages, conceivably designed to contradict the chief medical officer’s potentially life-saving daily bulletins.
And that’s not the half of it. Despite her efforts are widely appreciated Dr. Sharon Belmar-George has been described online as politically ambitious, an easy on the eye janissary manipulated by the government, by the prime minister in particular, despite that the CMO has repeatedly reassured the nation that his COVID-related pronouncements are based on her suggestions. It’s election time after all, and for some politics must take priority over all else, even the nation’s health.
Consider that widely publicized March meeting convened at the prime minister’s behest days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. We need not go into the disheartening efforts at disinforming, depressing and destabilizing citizens—despite that representatives of the more vital departments of government, health and security included, had attended and contributed their thoughts at the conference table.
Evidently, there are among us saboteurs who imagine this the best time to engage in surreptitious undermining of trust in the island’s leadership, no matter their propaganda often has turned on itself. While a leading participant at the remembered meeting pronounced the government’s strategies for combating the coronavirus “world class,” at a different venue his colleague declared Saint Lucia “the worst prepared.”
Others chose the moment to accelerate their campaigns, however transparent, sometimes without proper authority—never mind the incessant public warnings from the health departments and from the police about the dangers associated with mass gatherings and the flouting of established protocols. It was as if the devil’s generals had determined this was the most opportune time to unleash their bombs, when the always over-stretched authorities were pre-occupied with an unprecedented killer virus. Almost every measure adopted by the government to limit its spread was roundly criticized, made to appear unconstitutional, unnecessarily harsh, authoritarian, another policy decision calculated to make life more difficult for the nation’s less fortunate.
Not all the criticisms were meritless. The fear was real that welcoming visitors from the so-called “epicenter of the virus,” the United States—also the heart of our tourism-based economy—could have apocalyptic impact. But already the authorities had given the Sisyphean scenario much consideration and decided on ways at least to reduce the risks.
Meanwhile other detractors were priming their perceived doomsday weapon: Facebook. At the core of their heartless propaganda was that the nation’s prime minister was calculatedly denying citizens the lifebelts randomly dished out in the UK, Europe and the United States. Of course the regular overseas news outlets presented far less idyllic reports. Undeniable were the hellish images, the complaints about pleas gone unanswered, the fall-out from overwhelmed hospitals. It was difficult not to acknowledge that the nation’s minders, in their own straitened circumstances, were managing missions impossible, performing miracles dimensionally close to that of the loaves and the fishes.
The prime minister’s political opposites, echoing other opposition voices worldwide, accused him of having his priorities back to front, placing lives at risk in his pursuit of tourist dollars. Their siren song: shut down our borders; gradually reopen as the situation in the United States and the U.K. improves; redirect to COVID the millions borrowed for specific employment-generating projects. In support of their repeated hints and allegations that he was racist, the prime minister was painted a new shade of white. Black lives mattered as never before. Pointless pretending Allen Chastanet did not leave himself wide open to potentially crippling blows. Remember when he suggested that terrible as was colonization at least the colonials had a conscience!
His more vociferous critics cared not a bit for the fact that unlike the freed slaves who never received the “40 acres and a mule” promised them by Special Field Order No. 15 of 1865, our own former masters had bequeathed to us some of our more important institutions: among them parliament, our political system, schools, not to say laws that remain largely unchanged since their enactment centuries ago.
The undeniable truth is that the government continues daily to acknowledge it cannot by itself protect the nation against COVID; that the least it can do is everything in its power to keep the invisible beast at bay. Moreover, that even this it cannot accomplish without the full cooperation of all Saint Lucians, regardless of political affiliations. Predictably, the prime minister’s programmed detractors have countered with “why only now!” One opposition MP actually described as “sinister” the prime minister’s plea for unity. The opposition also alleges only supporters of the prime minister’s party have received relief, while others have been left to do the best they can regardless of how dire their circumstances. Actually, the record suggests support for casualties of COVID—inclusive of citizens previously unemployed or unemployable—totaling at time of writing over $70 million.
I am at this juncture reminded of a surprising confession by Allen Chastanet’s immediate predecessor. During a 2020 House debate, in tones reminiscent of a man whose worst nightmare he’d recently experienced, a finger wagging Kenny Anthony directly addressed the prime minister: “I want to warn you not to place much faith in the future of the Citizens Investment Program.” Although by his own admission his government had launched it at a hush-hush Hollywood-style launching in Monaco, now Anthony informed his parliamentary colleagues that he “always had anxieties about the CIP . . .”
Leaving to one side what may have caused him such distress—and who or what had persuaded him to proceed regardless—there are these cautionary words by one of my favorite contrarians, alas deceased. “When you gamble, you choose freely,” wrote Christopher Hitchens for Vanity Fair. “If you don’t want the rest of your life to be a gamble, for yourself or your dependents, then get insurance.”
It remains conjectural how Kenny Anthony insured Saint Lucia against the envisaged inevitable fall-out from the CIP that in his own mournful telling had caused him major anxieties. Like other leaders at their wits end how to resist COVID and still hold on to their jobs, Allen Chastanet knows well he is gambling when he invites tourists to our particularly vulnerable shores. He cites often our rock and a harder place predicament—even as his administration issues daily reminders to our fete-addicted populace that our survival depends on a Spartan level of self-discipline.
It needs be said that the politician in our prime minister—with imminent general elections in mind—has on occasion bowed to opposition pressure and relaxed some of his restrictions on public freedom. Conceivably conscious of the opposition flack that had greeted earlier lock-downs, a declared state of emergency and curfews, the prime minister has sometimes trusted the people to police themselves, with hardly surprising consequences.
Ironically some of his measures that were in certain local quarters criticized as “authoritarian and racist” are now being adopted by other governments under duress. As I write Bajans are excoriating on Facebook and elsewhere their prime minister Mia Mottley, often cited here as worthy of emulation by her Saint Lucian counterpart. The way Barbadians tell it, their prime minister “is treating us as if we were children . . . she expects us to do whatever she says . . . we have rights . . . she treats visitors better than she does Bajans . . .”
Business representatives have also pounced on the Barbados prime minister. In a joint statement the Entertainment Association of Barbados and the Barbados Association of Event Professionals complained: “While we understand the need to stimulate our economy through facilitating the ability of our tourism sector to generate revenue during the winter season, it is evident that with the increased number of visitors came the breakdown of the systems instituted by government which protected the island for several months. The longer we as a nation fail to control the impact of the virus locally, the longer we as an industry will suffer the curtailment of our business through government enforcement as a measure to control the spread of the virus.”
All of that in retaliation against government restrictions imposed in consequence of a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases recorded in Barbados following a Boxing Day “bus crawl.” As I write our own government is being pulled in all directions over its decision to reopen the island’s schools, nearly all of the comments for and against laced with election-time politics!
Rudyard Kipling offers a lesson most appropriate at this time: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting you too; if you can wait and not be tired of waiting or being lied about . . . you’ll be a Man, my son.” As Lev Grossman might’ve put it: For thinking outside the box and staying on course despite the distracting noise, for gambling with your political future in the best interests of the nation, for being wary but never afraid of the dark, the STAR Person of the Year is YOU—Allen Chastanet!
This article first appeared in the January 2021 edition of the STAR Monthly Review. Be sure to get your printed copy on newsstands or view it here: https://issuu.com/starbusinessweek/docs/star_monthly_review_january_2021
