According to good authority, Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has accepted Dr. Ubaldus Raymond’s resignation, both from the Saint Lucia Senate and as the government minister in charge of the public service, effective next week. Dr. Raymond is currently off island on official business and was unavailable for comment. Meanwhile, recorded somewhat salty conversations between him and an unidentified female have been making the rounds, on the internet and elsewhere.
The senator was earlier at the heart of a similar controversy last year, this time involving two young women he claimed had sought to blackmail him. The matter generated a storm of public resentment, with the prime minister coming under sustained pressure to fire Raymond, then attached to his office as finance minister. At the time the prime minister said he would make a decision based on the outcome of police charges against the teenaged blackmailers. But finally the charges were controversially withdrawn by the office of public prosecutions. Not long afterward the senator was given responsibility for the public service.
Before enlisting in the United Workers Party shortly before the 2016 general elections, Mr. Raymond served as a minister in the 2011 Labour Party administration, headed by Kenny Anthony. He resigned on the basis that the prime minister made him feel “like a doctor employed as a motor mechanic.” Before finally returning to join the Allen Chastanet-led UWP campaign for office, Raymond served in the government of Turks & Caicos. He is married with children.
