The last time Flambeau and Taiwan were friends,
Flambeau fucked up.
For the last year, Taiwan wanted nothing to do with them.
On Friday night, things changed.
Frederick's Departure Opens The Door For Flambeau To Get Funding
Well, that didn't take long.
No sooner did Allen Chastanet kick Richard Frederick out of the party than high level Taiwanese officials open talks with the opposition party.
On Friday, August 22nd, at around seven PM, Taiwanese vehicles were seen at Coco Palm for the very first time in long time. At 10pm, they were still there. And they weren't there to listen to Mary G and the band. They were nowhere near the restaurant, the bar or the massage parlor.
Nope.
Where were they?
In a place where Labour can't hear them plot the future of the beleaguered United Workers Party.
From the moment former ambassador Tom Chou set foot in St Lucia, the St Lucia Labour Party was openly hostile to him. When Flambeau started using Taiwanese money to fuel their rampage of corruption, during the last administration, Labour blamed Tom Chou and the Taiwanese for facilitating them.
But secretly, the Taiwanese were even more fed up with Flambeau than Labour. After all, it was their money being burned on condominiums at the Landings and apple farms in Canada or upstate New York or whatever.
Their internal communications and their communications with the government at the time are a record of that frustration. Still, Labour couldn't see the benefit of kissing and making up with the Taiwanese.
Even when a multi-millionaire deal to register and perhaps even manufacture Taiwanese yachts in St Lucia seemed imminent, Labour dragged its feet, hesitant to make Taiwan such an integral part of the St Lucian economy.
From the moment Allen Chastanet stripped Stephenson King of Flambeau's leadership, the UWP has been trying to get back into Taiwan's good books.
But Taiwan had had enough of that group of UWP leaders. They were just not a good investment. According to all reliable reports, the Taiwanese bluntly told Allen Chastanet that he could not rely on them for anything until the day that Stephenson King and Richard Frederick were out of the party.
They don't have much use for Guy Joseph, Ezekiel Joseph and Arsene James either.
It seems now that the Taiwanese are willing to take Richard Frederick's expulsion from the party as proof enough that Allen Chastanet really is changing Flambeau for the better.
In the absence of any goodwill whatsoever from Labour, even when Taiwan is dangling multi-million dollar yachting carrots in their face, Taiwan now has no choice but to deal with the only political leader in St Lucia who is willing to depend on them.
Labour could scuttle the whole partnership by pushing for a completion of the Taiwan-St Lucia yachting deal. But this would also permanently close the door on Labour's relationship with Beijing. At some point, in the extremely near future, the leaders of the St Lucia Labour Party are going to have to decide whether they are going to do what is good for Beijing or what is good for St Lucia.
At appoximately 10:04pm, the Taiwanese vehicles departed the company of Flambeau. After a year of being almost completely static, the St Lucian political landscape is in flux.
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