The Deadliest Mix of All: Language of Violence, Tit for Tatism and Standpipe Politics!

A recent political rally on the steps of the Castries market confirmed my suspicions that too many of us, our politicians in particular, seem stuck in a mid-fifties bog. At the mentioned public meeting Peter Josie typically served up a bombastic harangue replete with his trademark epithets and venomous declarations of war on sections of our society that he had long deemed the enemy within. 

Tom Walcott talked without a shred of evidence about the suspect disappearance of $300,000 from an unidentified government agency. As for his party leader Mr. Julian Hunte, he seemed concerned only with parochial matters—what V.S. Naipaul has referred to as “stand-pipe politics”—not with education, not with law and order, not with the wall-to-all unemployment that many blame for our escalating crime figures. This is the man who imagines he can persuade the electorate one day to make him our country’s prime minister.     

From almost every speaker came the sound of violence that is the background music of standpipe politics. It blames our more talented and educated sons and daughters, our hardest-working and therefore more successful citizens, for every misfortune suffered by the least educated and consequently most deprived among us. They are too busy grasping every opportunity for themselves and their friends, says the hateful language of standpipe politics, to worry about their suffering fellow citizens.  

Not even the collective church has been spared. The targeted are described as rogues, vermin, louts, idiots, snakes in the grass, whoremongers and what apparently is the worst of all insults—ass lickers!

Anyone reading this, who is unfamiliar with our culture, may well ask: How did these barely disguised, evidently upright citizens earn their dubious distinctions? We who live here—and too often endorse with our silence the words and actions of power-hungry and bitter reputation-assassins—know well the answer. And it is that the marked scapegoats had chosen to support the day’s government over its opposition—in the eyes of some, an unforgiveable disloyalty close to treason.

The language of violence in its most insidious form skillfully employs lies and half truths. It becomes, then, a not so sophisticated psychological weapon. By the clever selection of ambiguous words and insinuations, standpipe politicians can implant in the minds of the especially untutored messages calculated to make them feel like second-class citizens in the land that gave us birth—and promises but unconscionably denies equal opportunity.  

The ruling party has for the last two decades placed its faith in sloganeering, whether via mediocre jingles or newspaper advertisements. Slogans can easily be tailored to suit a variety of purposes. The party’s slogans are designed to make us react in predictable fashion. They are never designed to inspire critical thinking. The best slogans are easily remembered. They capture the imagination, arouse intense feelings and effectively render malleable the especially vulnerable.

“Better a casino than no employment at all!” makes perfect sense to the unemployed and hungry. Even the Bible advises that the sinner be first fed before he is  preached to about good morals and clean living. At their most effective, mind-bending election-time slogans with their promises of jobs for all—backed up with liquor for the asking, short-term employment however menial, now and then a handful of coins and access to suddenly affable candidates—can turn a political party into a religion to die for. Which may explain why the party faithful will tell you without hesitation that going back to before they were born their grannies and other members of their clan had always been staunch supporters of a particular political organization, and that was not about to change any time soon.

Political dialogue cannot forever remain an anachronism while educational standards and professionalism attain a zenith never before witnessed in Saint Lucia. Over the last two decades graduates and post-graduates of several disciplines have infiltrated every stratum of our society. Students at St. Mary’s and the A-Level colleges are aiming at careers in such prestigious fields as robotics and avionics. In a world fast contracting, they will return home to Saint Lucia and make a mockery of the present crop of politicians, the majority recruited from the peasantry and the ranks of the unemployable.  Coinciding with the arrival of our educated sons and daughters will be the disappearance of standpipe politics and the language of violence that together are our country’s worst enemy!

NB: The above first appeared in the STAR of January 1988. The late, unforgettable Pat Brown was conceivably under a dark cloud when he sat down to write the piece. Nevertheless he remained optimistic about our country’s future. If he were still here, dear reader, do you suppose Pat Brown would have good reason to celebrate the fulfillment of his prophecy? Is our country—three decades later—anywhere near where Pat Brown predicted it would be? Do we have in parliament an improved variety of politician? Are our MPs  committed to improving the quality of life for all Saint Lucians, regardless of political stripe? Is our political discourse, whether via social or mainstream media or at public gatherings, anywhere near what so many years ago Pat Brown had envisaged? We look forward to hearing from you!

– Rick Wayne