SLP Leader says Labour is ready for… "The Armageddon of Elections In St. Lucia!" - March 1, 2001

by Earl Bousquet

When the St. Lucia Labour Party took to its favourite stomping ground on the Castries Market Steps Tuesday evening for its first public meeting of the year, the faithful turned out in exceptionally large numbers. After all, it had been billed as one that would address many issues on the minds of St. Lucians, from Cable & Wireless to the Budget, from Human Rights to Housing to Elections. Party supporters also wanted to see the face of Nicholas Jean Baptiste, the new candidate for the Micoud North seat, who had the weekend before been endorsed by the party’s Constituency Group -- and had also just the day before been appointed to the Senate. More, the meeting was supposed to send a clear signal that, in keeping with earlier signals from the Party Leader, the SLP’s election campaign had began in earnest.

                By the time Soufriere MP Dr Walter Francois got to the platform, it was clear that Labour was on a roll. The ever-effervescent Minister of Planning made it clear he was ready to break Soufriere’s one-term cycle – so anxious that he urged the Prime Minister to “call it (elections) now”.

Castries East MP Philip J. Pierre was no less ready. Just the day before, the word was out, officially, that Peter Josie was willing to return to Marchand to try to recapture the seat from the Commerce Minister. It turned out that there were claims that Lorraine Williams had had a change of heart and mind about continuing in the role of “caretaker” for the seat. Only last Sunday Ms Williams was making the house-to-house rounds at Marchand, testing the ground as it were. But with Josie’s entry into the fray, and with others also indicating interest in the seat, it was now clear the UWP would have a problem on its hands.

Mr Pierre, who had won the highest number of votes by any candidate in the last election, had signaled early enough that there would be no special treatment for Ms Williams just because she was a lady. In this world of equality, he argued, how could he treat politicians different on the basis of their sex?

As the press reports went, it seemed the UWP had decided it was out with Lorraine and in with Peter. But to the incumbent --who had also just hours before also been re-endorsed (unopposed) by the Labour Party’s Castries East Constituency Group as the candidate for the seat at the next election -- it didn’t make a difference. He said he would take on all comers from the UWP, “even three at a time, including Lansiquot and Compton.” He too, he said, was “ready for elections tomorrow.”

And so was the Party Leader. By the time he took the platform for his hour-and-a-half speech that night, you could smell elections in the air. But most of his speech was not about politics.

The Prime Minister took much time and extreme care to explain, for the first time on a political platform, the issues involved in the negotiations with Cable & Wireless. He systematically combed through the facts and figures and pointedly indicated his government’s displeasure with the approach of the company to the negotiations. He revealed that the company also recorded increased profits in St. Lucia each year that amounted to over $200 million in less than ten years.

Dr Anthony noted that successive UWP and SLP-led governments had been good to Cable & Wireless over the past three decades. He acknowledged the contribution of the company to the development of St. Lucia and the Caribbean’s telecommunications infrastructure. He highlighted the fact that today, only one foreign national, “our brother from Barbados,” was on the company’s local staff, as a result of this administration’s efforts to ensure development of local skills.

The SLP Leader explained and defended the role played by Communications Minister Senator Calixte George in the negotiations with Cable & Wireless over the past two years. According to him, the minister was the key figure leading the charge for the OECS through the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) and hence his appointment to lead the negotiations on behalf of St. Lucia and the other OECS territories.

He said Senator George had been viciously “maligned by the company, both at home and abroad,” because of his forthright, decisive and sometimes uncompromising approach to the task of seeking lower telephone rates for St. Lucians.

The PM said it was not easy taking on the Cable & Wireless giant, hence St. Lucia’s enlisting of the support and involvement of the other islands in a collective approach that paid off. It had been a rough road, he recalled, “but the people of St. Lucia will not forget the company’s threats or this experience.”

The Prime Minister was confident, however, that the current talks would iron out remaining difficulties, as the company had agreed to all the conditions that Senator George had been pressing for.

He said he was also confident the company would remain and participate in a competitive and deregulated environment, “with a new license that’s in accordance with the new international reality.”

But the PM’s speech wasn’t only about Cable & Wireless. He also commented, in passing, on his government’s attitude to businesses, reminding supporters that “we have given more incentives to small businesses in three years than the UWP did in thirty.”

Dr Anthony highlighted too, the fact that his government was still taking essential services to communities that had been neglected during 30 years of the UWP. “Only a Labour government will spend one million dollars to take electricity to areas like Bouton and Guyabois, because we believe that in this day and age nobody, nowhere in St. Lucia should be without electricity, water or telephones.”

The Prime Minister also took the opportunity to offer a sneak peek at what’s in store for St. Lucians in the upcoming budget. He and his ministers, as well as Finance Ministry Budget personnel and senior ministry accounting staff had over the past few weeks been putting the 2001-2002 national budget in place. Earlier that same day, Cabinet ministers met for a policy review meeting to start putting the budget document in shape.

Dr Anthony, who is also Finance Minister, revealed there was relief in store for property owners, who would be getting a much-needed tax break. He assured that land and other property owners, pensioners and business owners could look forward to a reduction in property taxes.

But his address would have been incomplete without reference to the prevailing political situation. In the days before, the opposition UWP had been going through some internal convulsions. Former Party leader Sir John Compton had offered some stinging public criticism of the current Party Leader’ stewardship, pointedly saying there was, in effect, no opposition. He had written Dr Morella Joseph urging her to join him in talks with unidentified “concerned citizens” with a view towards formation of an electoral alliance against the SLP in the upcoming polls. Sir John had also publicly confirmed his re-entry into the partisan political fray and was considering a request to lead such an alliance.

The SLP Leader made it absolutely clear that now that Sir John had re-entered local partisan politics, he should no longer expected to be treated like a the statesman he purported to be after earlier announcing his withdrawal from public life.

Dr Anthony revealed that it was he, in his capacity as lead Prime Minister in Caricom with responsibility for Governance, who recommended that Sir John be appointed to head two Caricom missions to Haiti in the past year. But, he added, with the former Prime Minister now having re-entered the political fray, he could no longer recommend or support his nomination to continue in such a post, as such responsibilities are only given to persons not involved in active politics within any Caricom territory.

The SLP Leader made it abundantly clear that as far as he and his party are concerned, as long as Sir John was back in local electoral politics and continued to publicly display and express the politically partisan positions he has been taking of late, the former prime minister should not expect to be treated with the respect normally reserved for knights and statesmen.

“No more Sir John,” said the SLP Leader, reminding Mr Compton that he should not expected to be treated lightly, if and when he decides to lead the UWP, by whatever name and with whatever appendages, in the campaign for the upcoming general elections.

Dr Anthony ended the meeting with a declaration: “This (upcoming election) will be the Armageddon of all elections in St. Lucia.”

He explained that as far as the Labour Party was concerned it was goodbye to the politics of division and hate the country has become accustomed to over the last three decades. “This election,” he said, “will decide, once and for all, a break from the politics of the past.”

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