ARE OLLIE GOBAT'S MURDERERS HIDING BEHIND ST LUCIA'S DEATH PENALTY

DEATH & CONSEQUENCES: The Bullshit Behind Capital Punishment In A Small Island Where No One Has The Guts

No one in this parliament wants to face the consequences of implementing the death penalty.
No one has the taste for it.
No one implements it.
So why do we have a death penalty at all?

St Lucia will probably never execute another prisoner again.

But political leaders lack the courage and the virtue to stand up for human rights and repeal the death penalty.

Or maybe they’re just using the death penalty to help hide the truth about Ollie Gobat’s murder. Oh, the hypocrisy…the unforgiving transparency of it all.

More and more, the Ollie Gobat murder is proving that St Lucian politics and law enforcement is a major obstacle to the solving of murders on the island, rather than a driving force.

Over the last few months, the St Lucian government’s senseless stance to maintain the status quo on the dormant death penalty has exposed a frightening hypocrisy on the part of the Labour government: The death penalty in St Lucia, which has not been implemented for three decades, is serving mainly as a device for frustrating the ability of international law enforcement to assist St Lucian police.

It certainly isn't being used for anything else but obstructing justice.

THE SLAVE CATCHERS SONG

"Police! Police!
Run for your lives!
It's the police!"

The Royal St Lucia Police Force is a classic case of a colonial institution spreading rot in the independence era. It is descended from militias that used to hunt runaway slaves and has always been a force, not for protecting the majority of citizens, but for protecting the owners of the island from the majority of citizens.

(I really tried to make a joke out of that one, but….)

The St Lucian Police Force is so deeply rotted and corrupt that no amount of individual genius can clean it up. Ask former commissioner Ausbert Regis. Ask current commissioner Vernon Francois. Or rather don’t ask Francois. The poor guy is clueless. You could probably run a whole assassination squad in that Force with Francois’ signature and his ignorance.

Individual genius....
St Lucian C.O.P. Vernon "Blondy" Francois
He doesn't need international help to solve
 all these unsolved murders

NOw, there’s a guy, who if he was white, would be blonde.

The local cops need help. It takes a national collective effort and an honest bilateral effort with the countries mostly likely to get pooped on by cocaine passing through our ports.

It’s a big job. It’s going to take years and millions. You’d think both major political parties would agree to get that going and stick to the plan. 

Nah.

Instead, they are agreed on stalling the upgrading of the Royal St Lucia Police Force for as long as they possibly can. They’re practically thwarting progress with political interference. From the outside looking in, it looks like deliberate self sabotage.

But why, you ask, would any government fuck their police force over requests by powerful foreign forces for honest and inclusive investigations?  Why would any government throw away training opportunities for their cops and turn their backs on assistance in investigating vicious murders if all the donors wanted in return was the truth?

Sovereignty? Really? Maintaining the death penalty is now a legit way to express our sovereignty?

Whether you're for the death penalty or not, that just sounds stupid. But that’s what our government says.

Makes you wonder what the justice minister and the foreign minister are smoking nowadays.

"Now this," said the journalist Ras, "is what the Prime Minister
and the foreign affairs minister are NOT smoking.
Instead they are dragging their feet on freeing up the ganja economy."

"Oooh," nodded the others. "That explains everything."

BAD BOYZ, BAD BOYZ,  WHATCHU GONNA DOOOO…?

The Sisters of the Unsentimental Stalemate:
Former UWP kingmaker Richard Frederick
and current UWP king, Allen Chastanet

The truth is that for the last decade, we have seen a resistance to justice in the leadership circles of St Lucia that has grown to international proportions. We’ve seen a Flambeau government get written off by its strongest allies as a bunch of bloodless criminals.

"Psst! Allen, I think FLOGG Blog is back on our ass..."
Allen Chastanet and Guy Joseph

This was followed directly by a Labour government that did everything it possibly could to stall any true investigation of the criminal enterprises of the former government. This has caused even deeper problems for St Lucia’s international relations. 

While St Lucia was pissing off the US on behalf of Cuba over the last few years, Cuba was busy getting closer the US in preparation for the ending the trade embargo against them.

Lol. But the foreign relations comedy of Labour and Flambeau is a whole ’nother show. What is in focus here is the defense of criminality.

Kenny Anthony: What a CON'T!!!
(Which, of course, is short for
CONSTITUTION LAWYER)

Both the Kenny Anthony government and the cast of characters who call themselves Flambeau today seem to love fucking with international law enforcement. The 2006-11 government Flambeau’s Forty Feeves frustrated all efforts of the US State department and their related federal agencies to investigate a member of their government. In fact, that government even thwarted local efforts to investigate members of their government. By the end of their ‘reign’ both friends and foes alike agreed that the 2006-11 government could accurately be described as a transparent criminal enterprise. They are currently doing everything in their power to get away from the individual in question, in spite of their hierarchy being totally polluted by others who were party to the most nefarious doings of that so-called government. In short, the rest of the criminals in that party are trying to get away from the one criminal who seemed most criminal, in the hopes that no one will remember that they are the same criminals who aided and abetted the old criminals.

One could not imagine expecting the same from Labour. But when Labour came back into power in 2011, largely on the basis of rejecting of criminal enterprise in government, one of the first things they did was frustrate US law enforcement’s most diplomatic efforts to investigate that very same criminal enterprise.

By January of 2007, the US State Department already knew how much co-operation they were going to get from Kenny Anthony when it came to cleaning up justice in St Lucia:

None.

Up to this very day, Labour has managed to keep the Americans out of any investigation of the police force or by the police force. As far as they are concerned, the criminal enterprises of the former government should be of no great concern to the US. Such trivial travesties should only be political fodder for the St Lucian campaign trail.

After all, how would it be if Lucian politicians started selling out each other’s corruptions to foreign law enforcement? That’s a zero-sum game that ends with no politicians at all. Right?

Yep. Even when it’s wrong. Which explains we're still waiting for the sterilized version of the report from the Caribbean team of investigators on what the hell happened in 2009-10 when it looked very much like Lucian cops were on an extra-judicial killing spree.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you go, ‘Hmm…’

Kenny Anthony and his cohort promised us the head of political criminality on a stick. But it seems that they had no choice but to expose themselves to us as hypocrites who are, in principle, no better than the criminal enterprise they warned us to vote against in 2011. Are you kidding me? We must be making blague. National blague.

LET’S GO OVER THIS AGAIN

No amount of reasoning will make the St Lucian government’s position on the death penalty, on Ollie Gobat’s murder and on the investigation of the Royal St Lucia Police Force make sense.

Consider the facts:

St Lucia needs assistance to investigate some very troublesome and disturbing murders and Britain is very willing to provide that help. But Britain wants assurances that no one implicated in the case will face the death penalty. They had a bad experience where they helped Kenya solve some horrific crimes, but Kenya executed the perps, which of course makes British law enforcement, which against the death penalty, partners in an act of capital punishment. They can’t afford for that to happen again. But they can’t just let St Lucian law enforcement and St Lucian courts botch this investigation like they do every other major mystery. So they offer help, with the condition that we can’t execute the perps.

The correct answer to that is, "Sure. Why not? We don't have the guts to implement the death penalty anyway. We just keep it on the books to look tough." But noooo.....

St Lucia is affronted, saying that Britain should not interfere in sovereign affairs like the death penalty and legalized homophobia and other important stuff.

The irony is that the St Lucian government is admitting that they don’t really implement the death penalty anyway.

How does that add up? It doesn’t. It’s not supposed to.

You see, no St Lucia government for decades has had the guts to implement the death penalty. Capital punishment is an ugly thing. Killing another person is cruel and doesn’t prove anything except that the punisher lacks the imagination, the patience and the will to act in a godly/civilized way towards another.

Implementing a death sentence takes a lot of political support and a lot of guts and perhaps a bit of a tyrannical streak. It requires a leader to strong opposition from those that will not live in a barbaric unimaginative society. It requires you, as a leader, to admit that you're a bit of an Unchristian asshole.

No leader wants that. 

I had the balls for it.
I was just using them on....
something else...

John Compton didn’t have the balls for it and he had more balls in his left ball sac than the entire generation of current leaders has in all their scrota put together. They prefer to do everything possible to let that sleeping dog lie.

There is simply not a St Lucian leader with the guts to implement the death penalty and face the consequences.

But speaking of not having guts...

No St Lucian leader has the guts to strike the death penalty down either. They can’t face the consequences of executing a death penalty,  but they don’t want to have to stand up for human rights against the widespread ignorance that still imagines that the death penalty is a deterrent, rather than an admission of failure, the second wrong that doesn’t make a right.

DAWN OF THE SAME DAMNED THING

As a new election campaign season dawns on us like the blinding light of a sodium flood lamp in an East European rendition facility, the questions will come back like ghosts.

It will not just be about the economy. Labour and Flambeau wish it was about the economy. 

It’s about justice in St Lucia. 

It’s about the fact that Flambeau fucked us good and Labour is covering up for them and shielding them from justice.

Our economic well-being is just a smokescreen that hides what is really going on behind the scenes in sweet St Lucia. Human rights and freedom, the essential substance of our nation are being sold out by our leadership to protect their power. Our poverty and prosperity are just effects. The real story is just beginning to be told.

In the meantime, keep an eye on what's really hiding behind the death penalty. Chances are, it killed Ollie Gobat.

WHO'S AFRAID OF A BIG BAD IMPACS REPORT? (Answer: Kenny Anthony, Richard Frederick et al)

THE MAN WHO LEAKED THE RAMSAHOYE REPORT SAYS 

KENNY IS SCARED OF THE TRUTH

Poor Djab....the Jamaicans didn't lie enough on the IMPACS Report for you, pal?
Awww.....

Poor Kenny Anthony. 

He wants to be John Compton when he grows up, but it turns out just a high class Stephenson King. He's just another Prime Minister who is afraid of the whole truth.

He's more afraid than anyone of what is in the IMPACS report...and he's not even under investigation. Just like King and Flambeau were when they got the Ramsahoye Report in cost overruns by the previous Labour government, headed by...what's his name again...oh...Kenny Anthony.

But before we get into all that, let me just say this:

I did it. I confess.

The Man Who Leaked The Ramsahoye Report
(Identity withheld to protect the....oh, fuck it!)

I leaked the Ramsahoye Report directly out of Rick Wayne’s office to operatives of the St Lucia Labour Party. No one asked me to. No money was exchanged. No favors. I just wanted to throw a monkey wrench of truth into the machinations of the then-government and their peons in the press.

It was in the middle of the single term of Flambeau’s Forty Feeves. The US wasn’t coming down on them so hard for Richard Frederick’s head yet, but the Taiwanese had already recognized that Flambeau was a corrupt and cold blooded thing without John Compton at its helm. Everyone was stuck with Flambeau and we could only hope that they would not totally wreck the country before we had a chance to kick them out of office.

Flambeau was playing a dirty little political game with the truth. Upon getting into office, they decided to stay in campaign mode, taking every opportunity to demonize Kenny Anthony and using their semi-scandals as a smoke screen  behind which hide the criminal truth about that government.

It would have worked too, if not for that pesky John Compton dying on them and taking at least one third of their political support to the grave with him.

"I don't always lol, but when I do, it's cause FLOGG Blog said something sooo damned true!"

Pic of three random people who can laugh at both Kenny and Chastanet at the same time.
(Former minister Hon. Richard Frederick, current deputy to PM, Hon. Philip J Pierre and former PM-by-accident Stephenson King)

The deeper we got into Flambeau’s term from 2006-11, the easier it was to admit that that government was literally criminal and we needed to do everything in our power to get the hell away from them.

Once we did, we breathed a sigh of relief only to find out that the air around Kenny Anthony’s Labour smelt vaguely like the same kind of poop we just flushed down the political toilet.

Smells like Team Flambeau...

By his second month in office, Kenny Anthony,  the same paragon of virtue who promised us Richard Frederick’s head on a platter (I would have preferred a stick, I love kebab) had become the single most effective protector of everyone from the former Flambeau government.

Just another black guard blaggard.

By the end of his first seven months, he and his posse had made it clear  to the US State Department that they had no great interest in seeking the justice  they clamored for, now that they were in power. It would take a little longer for the St Lucian people to wake up to the truth.

It hurts....especially to people who took risks to weaken, dismantle and dispose of the criminals from the last government.

While Flambeau’s Feeves were in power, they were pretending that their Ramsahoye Report into the financial gymnastics and cost overruns of the preceding Labour government had found something criminal on Kenny. The government had made the report available to their good friend and fellow Kenny-phobiac Rick Wayne,  publisher of the STAR Newspaper and, at  the time, a well-known talk show host. Rick was rabid with glee at the time, talking many different varieties of shit about how Kenny did something criminal.

Rick Wayne had the report somewhere on the computer network at the STAR. I was working at the STAR. He was my boss.

I convinced the moron, I mean, my boss that if I could read the report before its release, we could lead the coverage of the report with in depth analysis while everyone else in the media  was still digesting it.

Rick fell for it. I mean, acquiesced.

A few days later, Virnette St Omer, a former media colleague who is unapologetically Labour got a call from me. She met me at the STAR. I literally printed out  the pages of the report at the office (i.e. at Rick's expense) and handed her the hard copy just outside the parking lot.

No cloak and dagger shit. No big deal. I just had a good reason for why I should commit a blatant act of betrayal against  a man who paid my salary and probably would have loved to be my mentor if only I would let him.

I was just tired of the government lying to the people about what the report said of Kenny Anthony. It said he was  a dick, a laissez faire, somewhat untrustworthy and half retarded (not in so many words),  but never once did it say he did anything criminal. In fact, very early on in the report, it very clearly said that he did not. Zero criminality. The opposite of everything King, Frederick, Guy Joseph, Rick Wayne and all the rest of the Kenny-phobiacs were saying.

A couple of weeks later,  Labour spoiled whatever plans Flambeau had for the report by outing its contents in a Market Step public meeting. Flambeau's web of lies started falling apart from there.

Guy Joseph, the real Spiderman-slash-opposition leader:
"What Jason say? Guy Joseph is Liar-in-Chief? Leave him for me to go Kanayda and give him one $19m lawsuit in his half-breed ass!"

How things have changed.

Now Kenny is in the driver’s seat and the IMPACS report on the Royal St Lucia Police Force is in, but Kenny is not performing any better than his criminal predecessors. He is not being forthcoming about the contents of the report.  He is not being open and transparent.

In fact, he is acting suspiciously like a criminal Flambeau who will do any and everything to maintain his grip on power, even if that means protecting the worst criminals in the last government  and the most corrupt police officers in the Eastern Caribbean from justice.

That motherfucker.

I can't wait to see the difference between what the IMPACS Report really says and what Kenny Anthony says about it.

But now that he has proven, over and over again that he is no less of a motherfucker than Richard Frederick, Allen Chastanet or Guy Joseph,  I have to search myself for some honest answers. After all, I'm one of the people who helped him weaken the former government. I am one of those who helped exchange the most fucked up government for  a more fucked up one.

If I knew then what I know now  about Kenny Anthony, would I have leaked the Ramsahoye Report from Rick Wayne’s office into Virnet St Omer’s hands?

Given that Flambeau is still  the same bunch of suspects (minus one) would I do the same thing today? If I got my hands on the IMPACS report, would I leak it in a way that benefited Flambeau? 

(I guess that’s quite impossible, since any honest investigation of the corruption in the Royal St Lucia Police Force is sure to damage both Flambeau and Labour. I mean, you see Chastanet marching for lower gas prices,  but you’ll never see him screaming out for the truth from about his former government cos that shit would just destroy him and all his best friends.)

And most ironically, if I got my  hands on the IMPACS report, would I do the opposite of what I did with Ramsahoye? Instead of stealing a report from Rick Wayne for Labour, would I steal a report from Labour and leak it to Rick so that he could smash Kenny Anthony's political skull with it in the weekend paper?

FROM RICK WAYNE'S WET DREAM JOURNAL:
"Kenny bad!!! Rick SMASH!!!! RAAAA!!!!"

Would these questions even affect the outcomes? After all, Labour and Flambeau have been the same for so long.

The questions that plague my conscience now may actually all be irrelevant. What Kenny Anthony’s delay on the IMPACS report suggests is that he is no better than the former Flambeau government when it comes to speaking difficult truths to his boss, the people of St Lucia.

And what he will say about the report will probably be as far from the truth as what he said in the August speech where he launch the IMPACS Task Force, deliberately excluding the Americans, who were the only people who were asking for an investigation in the first place.

So the relevant question is not an either or question whether Flambeau is more criminal than Labour. The question is more like, “What the fuck are we as a people going to do when both our major political parties are so willing to rape us and call it love? What do we do when our government seems to be protecting our opposition from justice?"

This is not rhetorical.

We really need to figure out what we’re going to do. Because  we can’t go on like this for another ten years. We need a better option than Flambeau and Labour. We need a government that is willing to let all criminals face justice.

In the meantime, let’s  wait for the Kenny Anthony government to release the IMPACS report. Let’s just hang back and watch those motherfuckers in government and see what they do. Let’s see them for what they really are.

Mem bet, mem pwel, as the bastards they kicked out of office.

"W...W...What are you trying to say? Kenny is as bad a me?
I categorically reject that!
Kenny Anthony could NEVER be as bad as me."