[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’d heard about “Gros-Chas” long before I met him. I first heard it when I entered St. Mary’s College. When finally I set eyes on the man I immediately understood why Michael Chastanet was commonly referred to as Gros-Chas. The sighting occurred one morning at the Castries waterfront where the big man was giving some stevedores a helping hand and as they loaded agricultural produce and charcoal onto a schooner that I learned was soon to leave for Barbados. It was not an everyday thing to see other than black folks doing this kind of work. Michael Chastanet did not strike me as Saint Lucian, so I was taken aback. In time I would learn the stevedores had been hand-picked from the slum community then known as Conway.
In the 1960s, Michael Chastanet worked for Geest Industries (W.I.) as a shipping agent. I made a mental note about him, that he was a man in love with the sea. I left Saint Lucia in pursuit of studies and would not set eyes on him for several years. From my late friend Patrick Fell, who worked at the customs department and was not only familiar with Michael Chastanet but also knew the names of his vessels, I learned he had transferred his shipping business overseas, having acquired some huge steel hull vessels. Apparently Chastanet was engaged in moving cargo all over the world.
When I became involved in party politics I learned from the island’s rumour mills that Gros-Chas had made “millions” from his shipping endeavors and had returned home to get into a new line of work related to housing developments, shopping and tourism. By 1997, I was already a seasoned politician with a number of elections under my belt. I had come to know Michael Chastanet well enough to request he contribute to my campaign fund. One day, at his invitation, I was at his house enjoying a cup of coffee when his phone rang. Almost in a panic he requested that I cut short my visit; something urgent had come up. Someone very important was en-route to his residence. As I say, I was by this time politically savvy enough to remove myself from his verandah but not so far away that I could not surreptitiously observe the reason my morning visit had been abruptly cut short. The all-important visitor turned out to be a famous investor known to be a close confidant of Michael Chastanet and John Compton. The investor had found Compton’s handpicked replacement a bit slow with regard to the sale of lands he wished to purchase for a project. Evidently Michael Chastanet, in his mediator role, had arranged a meeting at his house with the concerned parties. Suffice it to say all went well for the investor and government. After 1997, it appeared that the country was slowly, if not secretly, being converted into a paradise for the rich and a chosen few, with the Labour government disposing of real estate faster than a spoiled child can destroy his toys.
In his many conversations with me since then, and in his book “Room at the Top,” Michael Chastanet disclosed that he had worked with Kenny Anthony’s father loading copra and other products onto his schooner for sale in Barbados. It may have escaped the young Anthony (he made a point of not using his father’s surname, unlike his other siblings) but that is neither here nor there. Chastanet supported change of government and worked with the new administration after 1997 for the sake of Saint Lucia, his birthplace.
Fast forward to the 2016 general elections campaign, at which the political leader of the St. Lucia Labour Party declared that the elections would be “between the SLP and the Chastanets.” What could this be about, I wondered. What was responsible for the turn of events? I still wonder what had prompted the threats from the leader of the SLP. Why were they repeated? And why the tangled web of lies in the recent attempt to make an obvious threat sound like a regular pleasantry? Might the reason be madness; stupidity? Or something a lot more ominous? The former PM owes the people of Saint Lucia a full and comprehensive explanation. What did the Chastanets do to him and his SLP to render them marked targets? And if perchance he should experience a need to confess, he might also come clean on Grynberg and IMPACS!
We are left to wonder what changed between Anthony and Michael Chastanet, to whom the prime minister in his time had given an OBE for his contributions to local commerce, and whom he had made his development ambassador, with a diplomatic passport. To my mind, Michael Chastanet has been more than a visionary who contributed much to this island’s development. He deserves better treatment by the man who once considered him a very special Saint Lucian, which indeed Michael Chastanet is.
