[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nder the theme ‘Mobilize, Organise, Consolidate’, the St. Lucia Labour party held its 68th annual Conference of Delegates last Sunday, in Laborie. District representatives, Peter Alexander (ONE), Therold Prudent (LPM) and other supporters attended. The always controversial UWI lecturer and a former SLP election candidate Tennyson Joseph delivered the keynote address. He last made local headlines when he cited Donald Trump and Allen Chastanet as proof that the electorate should be wary of businessmen. Asked by local reporters to comment on Joseph’s assertion, Chastanet expressed surprise that despite the lecturer’s “often racist pronouncements” the University of the West Indies continued to employ him.
Perhaps out of an abundance of caution, Joseph started out on Sunday with the following declaration: “Let me state for the record that I’m not speaking here as an officer of the University of the West Indies. Whatever I have to say here today, I am not saying as a representative of the University of the West Indies. I am speaking here in my own personal capacity, as a concerned citizen of Saint Lucia, and as a card-carrying member of the St. Lucia Labour Party.”
“Despite our great history and our unmatched contribution to development,” he went on, “we find ourselves in opposition once again, despite all the evidence of our ability to govern, despite all the proof of our genuine commitment to Saint Lucia’s development, despite the fact that we have consistently produced the best and most able leaders of Saint Lucia. We find ourselves against class and social forces, which consistently succeed in mobilizing enough public opinion against us to deny us our rightful place as the government of Saint Lucia.”
He advised fellow party members of the necessity to conduct an analysis of the factors that may have caused the St. Lucia Labour party to lose the 2016 election to “a political aberration”. It is unlikely that he anticipated a response when he asked: “What sins and offences did we commit that so troubled the Saint Lucian voter, it caused them to rejoice over our downfall, and to celebrate this perfect stranger who they knew nothing about, and who they are only now discovering?”
He seemed to blame “a wider global ideology”, the purpose of which is to “attack social democratic governments like the SLP” while espousing a “neo-liberalism” with a pro-business philosophy that promotes privatization and government withdrawal from certain economic activities, which would then be taken over by the private sector.
“Once people begin to accept the idea of privatization as gospel,” he said, “they begin to believe that government is a business, and that governments exists only for the expansion of private business. Trump claimed he was a successful businessman and would make America rich and great again. Chastanet claimed that he was a businessman and he would put ‘ching-ching’ in Saint Lucia’s pockets.” He did not say whether Trump had kept his word. Neither did he comment on the IMF’s recently released encouraging growth figures in relation to the local economy.
Instead Dr. Joseph called on UWP parliamentarians to support the SLP political leader’s upcoming vote of no confidence in their own government. In closing, the UWI lecturer advised the SLP’s leadership to meet and engage every sector of the society in order to discover their needs and to help the SLP carve out policy.
