Will the real PM please stand up?

The United Workers Party leader Allen Chastanet has refuted government claims that he had been less than truthful about the island’s current Debt/GDP. At a press conference on Monday, Chastanet provided documentary evidence that the Debt to GDP ratio was now 89%, with a 14% increase projected for this year alone and a 17% increase since the SLP came into office two years ago. His source was the Caribbean Development Bank.

Also present at Monday’s meeting was Castries southeast MP Guy Joseph. He accused the government of having increased the national debt with huge pay-outs to permanent consultants, as well as additional permanent secretaries in the Office of the Prime Minister.

“This Labour Party is on a path of destruction,” Joseph observed. “The particularly sad thing about it is that not a single Labour Party MP will dare stand up in defense of the people of Saint Lucia. I need to tell them we have an unelected de-facto prime minister, who is making the decisions, while elected MPs are forced to look on in silence.”

“As far as I am concerned,” Joseph went on, “the public service minister Senator James Fletcher, is the real prime minister of this country.”

He went on: “How we did we move from 3 grade 21s to 12 grade 21s? What are the salaries of these people? Who is appointing the countless consultants? Are the elected ministers responsible?  Do we understand what is happening to our country?”

He referred to “back-door talk” that the government was planning to send home several workers with special packages and not replace them. The intention is to retain all their political appointees. Saint Lucians should be demanding explanations from their elected representatives.”

According to Guy Joseph when the UWP was in office they were told that there were other people than the prime minister than the elected (running the country).

“But it is interesting that the same things that you ask for your fellow men are the same things that happen to you,” he says. “And we have a bunch of elected people in the Labour party who have no say. And they cannot even stand to defend the cause of the people who voted for them far less the supporters of the United Workers Party,” he went on.

The outspoken Joseph then dared the prime minister to call to elections now if he believed that the UWP’s house was not in order. General elections are constitutionally due here in Saint Lucia by the year 2016.