…YET
In the
desperation and good sense that has led the nation to rightfully write off both
Kenny Anthony and Allen Chastanet as compete fucking losers, people seemed to
have settled on two names as reasonable and intelligent alternatives to the
current duopoly on St Lucian politics by the children of gross incompetence and
chronic corruption.
Both men are
highly intelligent achievers whose school record is nothing compared to their
work record. Both are self-made millionaires who have given service to the
public sector. Both are professionals in high demand. Both are one of a kind
specialists whose service in St Lucia is incomparable to anyone else’s. Both
are courageous and honest with the St Lucian people, frequently upsetting
professionals and profiteers of the establishment with their clear headed,
unbiased statements in the media.
And yet,
they couldn’t be more different people. One of them is as mild mannered as
Clark Kent. The other is as self-assured as Superman. With that in mind, let us
put the subject of Dr Stephen King’s unexpected election to the prime
ministership to the side for a moment.
Let us
instead count the reasons why Cuthbert Didier should NOT be prime minister.
The brother
single-handedly shaped a tourism subsector from a big hole in the ground in
mosquito infested Rodney Bay. It is the only subsector of the economy, apart
from crop diversification which shows double digit annual growth. Like crop
diversification, it continues to grow, in spite of institutional neglect and
the total abject failure of political leaders and professional advisors to
realize where the future lies. If you look at percentages, cruise and hotel
tourism are dead horses in comparison. All the real growth is in yachting. And
all that money goes directly to the government and the people of St Lucia – no
Butch Stewart, no tour operators, no statistical gymnastics, no middlemen, no
bullshit.
Given that
he has managed to open windows to tens, even hundreds of millions of foreign
exchange dollars for the small business owner in the island, I would be loathe
to waste his talent on the office of prime minister. Any moron can be prime
minister. Stephenson “I’m Frederick’s bitch” King did it. And if Kenny keeps on
his current course, Allen “Blondie” Chastanet is going to be a prime minister,
too. Any dumbass…but it takes a real smart person to grow an economic sector
while mostly everyone ignores them.
Politics
ruins people. Good people go into politics and before you can say Lenard Spider
Montoute, they’ve turned into complete and utter dick swinging donkeys who
refer to voters as ‘These people..’, ‘those people…’ and ‘dem people.’
Caribbean politics is like a radiation chamber. No one is immune to gamma
radiation. No one can survive that amount of concentrated power, undeserved
adulation and unwarranted, excessive convenience without succumbing to hubris.
They all
fall to hubris. Until we can figure out a system in which we can protect our
politicians from hubris, Cuthbert Didier (and Stephen King) should probably
stay out the radiation chamber, and let the Richard Fredericks and Kenny
Anthonys of the world burn themselves to the soul trying to become the next
Incredible Hulk.
We must also
not forget that once upon a time, both Flambeau and Labour were courting Koffi
(as he is affectionately called by his Neg Marron brethren). Labour wanted him
to run against Richard Frederick in Central Castries. Flambeau, meanwhile,
wanted him to run against Richard Frederick in Central Castries. One of the
parties leaked that Didier was a potential candidate and got a STAR reporter
named Jason Somethingortheother to write that Cuffy would kick Frederick’s ass
back to Columbia or Haiti or wherever he came from, if they faced off in an
election. Apparently, this was widely believed and accepted as a natural fact
and caused no small consternation among those who saw Frederick as a Jesus who
had come to deliver St Lucian politics out of Egypt and led us into southern
Columbia or west Venzuela or wherever he thinks the Promised Land is.
The result:
Police descended on Didier’s home both by land and by sea. No joke. The only
thing they didn’t have was a helicopter with a searchlight. They even had a
well known cameraman named Jerry in a police vehicle, ready to do some ambush
journalism. Of course, the report was not able to show Jerry coming out of the
police vehicle – which is both odd and unethical – because Jerry was holding
the camera and the camera was focused on Cuthbert. The nation second guessed
itself in the very moments when Didier was going through what modern Neg call
the MLK initiation, where an innocent person gets to experience what it’s like
to be a political prisoner in conditions that are repeatedly cited as human
rights abuse.
Of course,
you can’t keep a good man down, which is why we’re all here realizing that the
effort to paint Didier as some kind of drug smoking, gun waving maniac was more
true about his attackers than it was about him; which is why we are all here
thinking, “Yeah, I agree, that guy would make a better prime minister than
Kenny and Allen combined.
Should
Didier listen, once again, to voices urging into politics as though it was some
higher calling, he might find out that Labour is just as media-friendly as
Flambeau is when it comes to raiding his house and then saying he had an
unlicensed firearm as though his firearm licensed had not expired only two days
before the cops descended on him like he was some kinda drug-dealing
parliamentary criminal kingpin who burnt his friend in a garbage can in England
because he want to get rid on any connections between him and a convertible
that was stolen in Eastern Europe. Phew. That was a long sentence.
Furthermore,
if Didier were to run for either the impotent, dickless Labour Party or the
retarded, self-immolating UWP, he would immediately lose much of his existing
political support. What’s the point of running for a political party that looks
like a loser compared to you personally, right?
The problem
for St Lucia is that right thinking intelligent people like Dr King and Mr
Didier know that they have no future in the existing political parties. They
know too much about the corruptions that have gone on under the banners of
Flambeau opportunity and Labour’s bread and freedom. They know too well how
their friends have gone from being men of principle to men of compromise to men
of total fucking expediency in a short period of time to subject themselves to
the existing political machinery.
Unfortunately,
if either of them have to run using a higher political standard than Flambeau
and Labour’s yard fowl politics, they have to invent the machinery to promote
that higher standard. And in spite of how easy John Compton made it look, it’s
no easy feat inventing a new political reality.
A new
political reality is exactly what St Lucia needs right now, however.
One can only
hope that people like Dr King and Cuthbert Didier have realized this and are
quietly conspiring to help create that new reality that liberates us from
decades of political duopoly. Within their own parties, sensible people are
already beginning to admit the corruption, incompetence and impotence of their
parties leaders, executives and machinery to effect positive change. And if
people inside the parties of tired of putting elections over development, you
can only imagine how people outside of the parties feel.
St Lucia
needs new political leaders. It needs a new political culture and mostly like
some new dominant political parties. Labour and Flambeau are relegating
themselves to the dustbins of history and sucking the whole country down with
them. Rescuing St Lucia from the Labour-Flambeau nightmare is going to take
some organization as well as some vision.
Maybe Dr
King and Didier aren’t ready to take up the mantle of leadership. But they must
take on the mantle of conspiracy. The people have lost faith in their
government and have chosen their new leaders. The new leaders must not rush in
where angels fear to tread. But they must not ignore the voice of the people.
Dr King and
Didier must heed these growing calls for their leadership.
These men of
achievement must lead the struggle to find ways out of the mire that IS
Flambeau-Labour.
The voice of
the people has spoken.
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