WHY DIDER & DR KING SHOULD NOT BE PRIME MINISTER

…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.